Kernel Development Learning Pipeline

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Course Policies

Assignment Procedures:

• Coding Assignments:

  • Assignments must be submitted in the format of plaintext unless explicitly specified.
  • Assignments must be submitted in the form of email code patches, and furthermore:
    • Submissions must conform to all Linux kernel coding standards that are sane in a particular context.
    • Submissions must not contain whitespace errors
  • The instructors will provide detailed guidelines for automated checking of these requirements, and will gladly explain them upon request to any interested student
    • Therefore the instructors reserve the right to refuse to grade any submission that does not conform to these standards.
  • Students will participate in peer review for these assignments, as explained in the section below.
  • Any code submission that fails to compile with zero warnings and zero errors will receive a zero.

• Presentation Assignments:

  • Students will be required to complete two (2) presentations throughout the course
  • Students must deliver their presentations over a live video call
  • Presentations must include original visual content, such as slides
  • Students are required to include live demonstrations of their code by sharing their text editor and/or terminal during the presentation

• Instructors reserve the right to change due dates within reason

  • In such a case, we will provide sufficient advance notice to students

Peer Review Procedure (only for coding assignments)

• Students must participate in the class mailing list for submissions by giving other students feedback on their work.
• This is a part of each assignment grade and the tripartite scheme is as follows:
  • The review process spans 2 days.
  • Part 1: Initial submission
    • The student makes their submission to the mailing list using git-send-email.
    • This submission is due on the listed assignment “due date”, see the course schedule.
    • If the initial submission is late, the student will get a zero on the entire assignment.
  • Part 2: Peer review
    • A student is given two other student names (call them student A and student B).
    • The student is assigned to review student A’s and student B’s submissions.
    • If the student approves of a submission, then the student will reply to the approved email with what we call an “ack”.
      • An “ack” consists of a single line containing the following: Acked-by: Firstname Lastname <email@domain.tld>.
    • If the student sees problems with a submission, the student will reply to the problematic email with their feedback.
    • In parallel, other students have been assigned the student’s submission and the student should recieve feedback from two other students.
    • These reviews are due one day past the initial submission, a late or no submission results in a zero for the review section of the assignment.
    • Reviews are graded based on how many issues a student missed.
      • The student receives 20% off for each unique issue not spotted with max penalty of 100%.
  • Part 3: Final submission
    • The student, if canny, will act on the feedback from the received reviews.
    • Regardless of whether the student made changes to their initial submission, they must make a final submission.
    • This is due two days after the initial submission, and due one day after receiving the reviews.
  • Overall assignment grading scheme (percentages are relative to the total assignment grade):
    • The initial submission is purely for the peer-review process. It is crucial that the initial submission is made on time, otherwise, as stated above, the student will recieve a zero on the entire assignment.
    • Review 1: 10%
    • Review 2: 10%
    • Final Submission: 80%

Late Work Policy:

• There is no late work!
  • Students receive a zero for assignments not submitted on time.
• One exception (a once per semester get out of jail free card):
  • Students may choose to opt out of the peer review process.
  • By bypassing the ack requirement (both giving and receiving) students receive the two days that would be used for that process as an extension before they make their first and only final submission.
  • This means that you do you not get a chance to receive early feedback from your peers and so you get what you get for a final grade.

Mentorship Graduation:

• Students and mentees will be given the status of “Graduated” if we determine that their performance has been suitable to the degree that we would recommend as a strong candidate for an internship doing basic Linux kernel engineering work.