Instead of a proctored, paper exam that falls victim to the whims of the postal service (or email), your midterm and final exams are given as a set of timed RamCT quizzes. Most of these will be available early on the first day of the exam period (which may run from eight to eleven days). Please check the RamCT course calendar to see when each exam period opens and closes.

You may take the quizzes at different times -- at your convenience, but you should have completed them all before midnight on the last day of the stated exam period. This gives you eight to eleven days to complete them.

While every quiz is different, each of these quizzes has the same weight as the others, i.e. each quiz counts for the same number of points. There are more quizzes than you need to complete for your midterm. This not only allows for a choice for questions you may complete, it also provides alternative quizzes, should something go wrong while you are attempting to take one. In other words, if the network goes down while you are taking one of these exam quizzes, you will not be permitted to retake it. Instead, take one of the other quizzes.

The last letter of the title for each quiz should provide hints concerning what type of questions the quiz contains. The letter 'P' implies a problem set, while the letter 'D' implies that definitions or explanations of some sort need to be written. If both the letters 'D' and 'P' are at the end of a quiz name, that quiz contains both types of questions.

Each quiz may be taken only once. This means if some system crashes or you are interrupted while you are taking a quiz, you will not be able to redo it later. Instead, do one of the alternate quizzes.

For instance, suppose there are eight quizzes for a given exam. You might need only to complete six of these quizzes. So if one of these crashes, you can take one of the remaining two quizzes. In any case, your grade for this exam is the average of your top six quiz scores. This means that doing all eight quizzes, instead of only six, might be to your advantage.

The answers to the questions are to be typed out in a textbox following each question. Some of these may accept HTML, as well as text, but try to do your best with mathematical notation, such as x^2 for x2 or SUM(1 to n) [f(x_i)] for the sum from 1 to n of f(xi).

Each quiz is timed; each should take less time than the amount given. However, I do not expect you to need much more than half the amount of given time to complete it. A penalty will be assessed for each minute past the maximum amount of time that you take on any given quiz. The amount of penalty depends partly on the performance of the rest of the class on the same quiz. In other words, if everyone takes 43 minutes to do a 40-minute quiz, there will be little or no penalty imposed. However, if you take 60 minutes while everyone else completes it in less than 40 minutes, there WILL be a serious penalty.

You may use calculators, unless they are programmed to handle the type of problems you expect to see in these exam quizzes or unless specified by the given question.

There is no way for me to know whether or not you are using the textbook and notes. Therefore, you may use them, if you wish. However, since the quiz is timed, I do not recommend your wasting time searching through the text or on the Web looking for an answer.

You do NOT need a proctor. However, you must take the test in solitude -- with no email, telephone, text messaging, etc. I am aware that some of you work together and that some of you share very similar addresses. Please do not make these quizzes joint projects, or we will have to go back to the pain and hassle of proctored exams.

Please do not discuss these midterm quizzes with anyone, as not all the students take the quizzes at the same time as you.

For these reasons, please complete the appropriate certification form (attached to a discussion board message from the instructor), and email it to me before you begin your exam. There is a separate certification for each exam (but not each quiz).

These quizzes may be partially graded automatically. However, I will double check all the answers for all the quizzes, effectively hand-grading them all, which will not happen until after the end of the test period.

PLEASE let me know by email if one of the questions does not appear to make sense to you for some reason. However, complete the given quiz as well as you can, as I may not read your email for several hours and that quiz is being timed.