This page presents the grading criteria to assess the contribution in each task category: "presentation", "essay", "video demo", "executable tutorial", "contribution to open-source", "course automation", "feedback".
Note: we are all aware that this assessment is subjective by nature. In case of disagreement, the informed judgement of the Professor is the final decision.
The concept: The students prepare a 7 minute presentation on a topic that is relevant to DevOps. All students in a presentation must be present and speak in a balanced manner.
| Yes | No | Remarkable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| timing: The presentation's length is exactly in 7 minutes (hard limit) | Yes | No | n-a |
| well-structured: The presentation is well structured | Yes | No | Structure is announced and graphically visible |
| motivation: The presentation contains a good, motivating introduction | Yes | No | Contains good story-telling |
| technical: The presentation contains one part that is deeply technical | Yes | No | Valuable and readable code snippets |
| originality: The presentation contains one part that is original | Yes | No | Less than 100 results on Google on this topic. |
| reflection: The presentation contains a reflective part | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| take-home: The last slide contains a good and concise take-home message | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| loudly: The speakers talk loudly and clearly | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| engagement: The speakers engage with the audience | Yes | No | Real interaction (survey, kahoot) |
| humour: The speakers are fun, have humour | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| readable-slides: The slides don't have too much text | Yes | No | n-a |
| illustration: The slides contain nice illustrations | Yes | No | Remarkable |
To pass, you need at least 7 "yes". To get a distinction, you need at least 3 "remarkable".
The concept: The students write a 2000-word essay on a topic relevant to the course. Example of essays, see 2019 essays, 2020 essays
| Yes | No | Remarkable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| format: The essay is in PDF | Mandatory | - | - |
| title: The essay has a good title | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| well-structured: The essay is well structured, the ideas are well presented | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| introduction: The essay contains a good introduction | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| conclusion: The essay contains a good conclusion | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| self-contained: The essay is self-contained, one can understand it without reading something else (expected knowledge of the reader: a master student in computer science) | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| innovative: The essay contains innovative ideas or material | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| figures: The essay contains good figures or listings | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| sound: The essay is sound, factual, and accurate | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| references: The essay contains references, appropriate in number and quality (10 good refs is a minimum) | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| elegant: The essay presentation is elegant / visually appealing (eg LaTeX, InDesign) | Yes | No | Remarkable |
| relevant: The essay addresses a topic that is relevant for DevOps | Yes | No | Remarkable |
To pass, you need at least 7 "yes". To get a distinction, you need at least 3 "remarkable".
The concept: Students prepare top-notch demonstrations and deliver them as an online video. The demonstrations are really DevOps. For example, a demo typically involves multiple virtual machines, likely deployed in the cloud. A demonstration is scripted and lasts 3 minutes. Students are required to prepare a video of the demo. There will be two sessions, each one with half of the students. During a session, the other half of the students, the course teaching team, as well as invited guests (colleagues, industry collaborators) watch the videos and provide feedback.
Among the guests, some are "critique" (in the sense of culinary critique), they are here to assess the relevance, the difficulty, the sublime and the originality of the demo. As food critique, those critiques are anonymous: as a presenter you do not know if a person in the audience is critique or not. Some students will be randomly assigned the critique role on a voluntary basis.
| Yes | No | Remarkable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The demonstration is clearly motivated (why it matters for Devops?) | Yes | No | Relates to a hard problem |
| The demonstration is difficult to do | Yes | No | Relies on a non trivial infrastructure |
| The demonstration is original | Yes | No | The are less than 10 demos on the topic on Internet |
| The video is sublime (eg visually appealing) | Yes | No | Excellent narrative |
| The video contains an easter egg | Yes | No | Related to the demo |
| There is a code repo to run the demo | Yes | No | Code repo with a solid readme |
| The video must contain subtitles which are clear and in proper English | Yes | No | Clearly understandable voice over |
| The video includes a take-home message | Yes | No | Actionable takeaway |
To pass, you must have at least 4 "yes". To get a distinction, you must have at least 2 "remarkable".
The concept: you contribute to one open-source project related to DevOps. Yout get at least one merged pull-request.
Criteria for the selection of the open-source project:
- The project is related to DevOps
- The project has more than 10 Stars
- The project has more than 100 Commits
- The project has an active community on GitHub
| Yes | No | Remarkable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The contribution fixes bugs | Yes | No | hard bugs |
| The contribution improves documentation | Yes | No | big documentation improvements |
| The contribution adds new features | Yes | No | hard features |
| The contribution is much appreciated by the community | Yes | No | highly praised |
To pass, you must have one yes. To get a distinction, you must have at least one remarkable contribution.
The concept: you create an executable tutorial about a specific technology related to Devops. You deliver your tutorial on an appropriate platform, such as Katacoda, mybinder.org or similar. If the tutorial runs locally, the tutorial must run on Linux.
An executable tutorial is not a youtube video.
| Yes | No | Remarkable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The TA can successful execute all the commands of the tutorial (mandatory) | Yes | No | In the browser |
| If local execution, runs on Linux | Yes | No | Easy to setup and run |
| The tutorial gives enough background | Yes | No | Comprehensive background |
| The tutorial is easy to follow | Yes | No | Well documented |
| The tutorial is original, no such tutorial exists on the web | Yes | No | The teaching team never heard about it |
| The tutorial contains easter eggs | Yes | No | Subtle and fun |
| The tutorial is successful (attracts comments and success) | Yes | No | Lively discussion |
| The language is correct | Yes | No | Interesting narrative |
To pass, you must have at least 4 "yes" and the TA assessment. To get a distinction, you must have one browser version and at least 1 "remarkable".
The concept: you create an automation task for the course to improve the teaching experience and effectiveness (eg a Github action task). Simple tasks can be bundled in a package to get a pass.
Suggestions for course automation tasks: KTH#916
| Yes | No | Remarkable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The work is done before April 6, 2021 (in order to be useful for the course) | Yes | No | n-a |
| The automation task produces a PR status or issue / PR comment | Yes | No | Points to a generated page with valuable additional information |
| The automation task is reusable | Yes (next year for this course) | No | In other courses than this one |
| The task runs on a standard platform | Yes (Github action) | No | Other platforms (e.g. Moodle, Canvas) |
| The task is praised by the other students of this course | Yes | No | n-a |
| The code for the task is available | Yes (public repo) | No | Well documented repo |
To pass, you must have at least 4 "yes" and the TA assessment. To get a distinction, you must pass and have at least 1 "remarkable".
The concept: you provide constructive and timely feeback about one task from categories "essay" and "executable tutorial". The feedback is provided in a written manner, as a well-structured comment on the PR of the task.
| Yes | No | Remarkable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The feedback includes both strengths and weaknesses about the task | Yes | No | n-a |
| The feedback is provided 4 business days before the task deadline | Yes | No | Within 24h after the task submission |
| All points are clearly actionable | Yes | No | PR on PR |
| The feedback is substantiated | Yes (at least 500 words) | No | At least 1000 words |
| The feedback contains pointers to additional material | Yes | No | One pointer is less than one week |
| The students act upon the feedback they receive | Yes | No | Document the changes made after feedback |
To pass, you must have at least 4 "yes" and the TA assessment. To get a distinction, you must pass and have at least 1 "remarkable".