ICS 211 organization, Spring 2011

Instructor: Edo Biagioni, esb@hawaii.edu. See here for office hours.

Teaching Assistant:

To send email to the mailing list that reaches the entire class (including the instructor and TA), send to:

UHM-ICS211-1-L@lists.hawaii.edu

You can only send to this address if you have been added to the mailing list, that is, only from your @hawaii.edu account.

This class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:30-11:45 in Crawford 105. Crawford is about a 10 minute walk from POST (near Hawaii Hall), so make sure to allow enough time.

The lab for this class meets:

The teaching assistant for Sections 2 and 3 is John Wu. The first lab is on Wednesday, January 12th.

Generally speaking, the instructor is responsible for the lectures and the exams, and the TA is responsible for the labs. The instructor assigns the homeworks and the TA grades them. Homeworks are posted on the web site no later than Tuesday each week and are due on Monday, any time. All assignments must be turned in on time.

Attendance to the lectures is required: the instructor takes attendance by giving a quiz at the beginning of each lecture. Attendance in the lab is required for most students to do well in the course.


Goals

In this course, students will: Learning to program in Java is only one of the goals for this course, but may be the most important: fluency in Java is needed to apply many of the other tools and information presented in this course as well as in subsequent ICS courses. The homeworks and exams assume students are comfortable programming in Java at the level required for this course. Students who are not comfortable with programming, as determined either by individual difficulty or by lack of overall success on homework assignments, should consult with the TAs or instructor for additional (optional) assignments to help them come up to speed.

Textbook

One of the following two textbooks is required. The first is the newer one, and you should purchase it if you are buying a new textbook. If you are buying it used, either textbook would be fine.

Organization and Grading

This course has three exams (including the final exam) and a number of homework assignments.

Grades are assigned based on your performance on:

There will also be 3% extra credit given to everyone in the class if at least 85% of the students in the class complete the class evaluation (ecafe).

Grading will use the standard cutoffs of 97% (A+), 93% (A), 90% (A-), 87% (B+), 83% (B), 80% (B-), 77% (C+), 73% (C), 70% (C-), 67% (D+), 63% (D), 60% (D-). Note that you need a B or better in ICS 211 (83% or more) to take ICS 311.

The homeworks are graded by the Teaching Assistant (TA), the exams by the instructor. Any questions should be directed accordingly.

Unless stated otherwise, homeworks will be due on Mondays, at any time. All homeworks must be turned in on time, that is, by midnight Monday if the due date is Monday. You are more than welcome to turn in your assignment ahead of time. The assignment is emailed to the TA, John Wu, at both of these addresses: johnwu@hawaii.edu and johnwu96822@gmail.com .

Your grade on an assignment may be affected if you fail to follow the instructions for completing and submitting the assignment (So, follow the instructions!).

It is to every student's advantage to turn in assignments by the due date, even if the assignment is not complete. This gives the possibility of obtaining at least partial credit for the work done. Assignments not turned in by the due date will get no credit.

Exams are in-class, closed book, closed notes, with no calculators or other aids (electronic or otherwise) allowed. Exams include programming problems.

Exams may be taken early, if requested at least one week before the scheduled time. Under no circumstances may an exam be taken late. If an exam is missed for a very good, well documented reason, the next exam will count twice as much, except for the final, in which case an incomplete will be given.

Class attendance is taken at the scheduled start time of the class.

Class participation is encouraged. Comments and questions are particularly helpful to the instructor and generally to the class. If needed to encourage class participation, the instructor may call on students to answer specific questions or contribute opinions. Participation in class should be friendly, relaxed, and mutually respectful.

Any questions about assignments should be directed to the TAs or the instructor rather than fellow students. As a student, you should decline to answer questions about assignments for which the deadline is not yet over. You are, of course, welcome to collaborate on assignments for which the deadline has passed, or on exam preparation or on reviewing past exams.

Bringing food or drinks to the labs is prohibited, and may result in your losing your lab account, which may make it difficult for you to complete the assignments. It may also result in damage to the equipment, which may not be replaced.


Cheating

In this course, students may not use material from any source whatsoever in completing their assignments. Code should be written by the student, not copied from the textbook or another book, the web, another student, or any other source. Any violation of this is considered cheating. There is to be no collaboration whatsoever on exams or homeworks. Anything a student turns in must be entirely that student's own intellectual contribution. The TA may check homeworks using a specialized tool designed to detect cheating.

In the past, TAs have detected cheating on homeworks. Don't do it!!!

In general, cheating means presenting the work of somebody else as one's own, or providing one's work to somebody else to help them cheat.

No Cheating Policy: any cheating will result in a grade of 0 for the assignment or exam the first time it is detected, and a grade of F for the course for any subsequent instance. Any instance of cheating will also be recorded in the student's ICS department file, and may be reported to the office of the Dean of Students, possibly resulting in disciplinary action against the student.

The Student Conduct Code has more details on both impermissible behavior (see for example section IV.B.1 of the policies, Acts of dishonesty) and possible disciplinary sanctions.

If you have any questions, please contact the instructor or the TAs.


Disabilities

If you feel you need reasonable accomodations because of the impact of a disability, please (1) contact the Kokua (Disability Access) Program at 956-7511 or in room 013 of the Queen Lili'uokalani Center for Student Services, and/or (2) speak with me privately to discuss your specific needs. I will be happy to work with you and the Kokua program to meet your access needs related to your documented disability.

Improvements

This course is largely based on the same course most recently taught in the Spring 2010. As you can see, this material is updated and reused, so any suggestions for improving these web pages should be sent to the instructor.

Acknowledgement

Much of the material in this course was adapted, with consent, from material developed by William Albritton.