In a quest for continuous improvement, I’m offering the following opportunities for extra credit throughout the semester. (Additional extra credit may be offered on individual assignments based on specific circumstances and at the discretion of the instructor.) Please note that the total amount of extra credit from the following opportunities is capped – i.e., you cannot earn more than the maximum number of points from these opportunities even if you complete them all.

Deadline
2300 on Lesson 40
Submission
Email the instructor by the deadline listed
Points
Varies, up to a maximum of 25 points

Bug Bounty

Despite the time that I spend reviewing and revising course materials, there always seems to be a misspelled word or broken link somewhere. I will “pay” anyone who finds a mistake in published course material. Like industrial bug bounty programs, only the first person to report the issue will receive credit (although I can split it if multiple individuals find a mistake while working together) and the amount of the award depends upon the severity of the issue. For example, a simple typographical mistake might warrant a point, but a missing attribution might receive several points. The amount of credit is solely based on the discretion of the instructor.

In general, err on the side of reporting everything that looks like a mistake, but do not abuse this offer – I reserve the right to subtract credit for spurious bug reports, particularly if an individual continues to submit them after a warning. You should also provide the correction for everything that you report (e.g., if you’re claiming that the posted solution is incorrect for a handout, then you should also provide the correct solution and explain why the original answer is incorrect). Only in rare cases should the correction be omitted, such as an invalid link where the correct destination isn’t known. Service disruptions outside the instructor’s control (e.g., an outage of GitHub Pages) will not warrant extra credit.

The order in which I receive notifications about mistakes determines who receives the credit. Please be aware that it can take some time to verify (and correct!) each mistake. Do not be alarmed if you don’t hear back from me immediately, but the expected turnaround time should be less than two business days.

Course Material

Some of you undoubtedly have good ideas for resources that would help you in this course. For example, would you like to have additional reading guides to accompany the textbook chapters or sample questions to prepare for graded reviews (GRs)? If so, this opportunity is your chance to develop that material and to receive extra credit for your work.

I’ll consider credit for anything that’s related to the course material, and the more polished and comprehensive that it is, the more credit it deserves. More specifically, I’m looking for student-developed resources that I can drop into the course website. References to third-party content, such as an online tutorial for learning the Structured Query Language (SQL), while appreciated, are not the intent of this opportunity and warrant minimal credit, if any.

Given the open-ended nature of this opportunity, you should coordinate with me prior to spending a great deal of time on it. Before starting, we should agree on how much credit it’s worth when completed. Larger efforts may be split among multiple individuals – e.g., two individuals may work together to develop practice exercises and their solutions.

Please be aware that any third-party resources – such as cartoons or diagrams created by others – must be licensed in such a way that I can legally include them in the course material. No credit will be awarded if that isn’t the case. If you develop the material yourself, then sending it to me implies that I can reuse it for future classes, including posting it or linking to it from the course website.

A few ideas for these resources are as follows:

  • Online quizzes for reading assignments (designed for students to identify trouble areas and questions prior to coming to class rather than as a formal assessment)
  • Support for additional platforms – operating systems, databases, and applications
  • A “cheat sheet” for a course topic (e.g., entity-relationship (ER) diagrams, SQL, and B+ trees)