CS151 - Structured Programming and Elementary Algorithms

Randolph M. Jones

Colby College, Fall Semester, 2000

Time

11:00 AM - 11:50 AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Location

Lovejoy 203

Textbook

Course content

The intent of this course is to teach you how to program computers. As part of this course, you will learn a modern programming language, called Java. However, that will in some ways be incidental to the primary purpose of this course. By the time you finish this course, we hope you will have developed the skills to:

From the above list, it is hopefully apparent that the main point of this course is to teach you the analytical skills and programming conventions the will make you into capable computer programmers, and eventually competent computer scientists. Your day-to-day activities will focus on learning the Java programming language, but you should view that mostly as a tool that helps you learn generally how to make computers do what you want them to do.

I hope to cover (at least) the following general topics during the course (these correspond roughly to Chapters 1-4, 6-10, 12, 14, and 16 of your textbook):

Evaluation

The course will include a variety of homework assignments, quizzes, exams, and projects.

Homework

This will be assigned occasionally, based on contents of the textbook and lectures.

Quizzes

Each quiz will take up only a portion of class time. You will have a quiz or exam every few weeks.

Exams

There will be two midterm exams, each taking an entire class period. The midterms will be on October 11 and November 15.

There will also be a final exam during the scheduled final examination period for this class.

Projects

Projects will be assigned, collected, and returned during your lab section. Typically, you will receive a new project every week at the beginning of lab, and you will have a week to finish the project.

In many ways, the projects and lab sessions are the most important parts of this course. It is very difficult to learn computer programming without lots of practice. Although the lectures, homeworks, quizzes, and exams will allow you to build up background knowledge, you will ultimately learn the most from putting all this knowledge into action by solving problems and creating and debugging programs for the laboratory projects.

Grading

I will compute final grades for the course using the following proportions:

Each score you receive will be normalized to a 100 point scale. These will not map directly to letter grades until everything is tallied at the end of the semester. However, as a rough guide, I generally consider 90 points or more to be ``A'' work, 80 points or more to be ``B'' work, 70 points or more to be ``C'' work, and 60 points or more to be ``D'' work.

I also generally assume that if you do everything I ask, that's worth about an A-minus. To receive an exceptional grade, you need to do exceptional work, show particular enthusiasm, come up with especially industrious or innovative solutions, or otherwise impress me with your grasp of the material.

The lab instructor will set the grading policy for your laboratory projects.

Your daily duties

To prepare for each class, I expect you to do the following:

Show up

I expect you to attend every class. As a class member, your regular attendance is an individual and a collective obligation. In-class discussion and questions are an essential feature of this course that only you can provide. Your absence can disrupt the continuity of the class, my effectiveness in presenting the ideas I want to cover, and the group's responsiveness to those ideas. Therefore, unexcused absences will adversely affect your course grade. Excessive absenteeism will result in your failing the course (and it doesn't take much to count as excessive). See your college handbook for a definition of excused absences. You are responsible for knowing all the information presented in class, whether or not you are there.

Be prepared

Before each class, you must review the material from the previous lecture. You should write down and bring to class any questions you have on the material, as well as questions on the current laboratory assignment. We will devote a portion of each class to answering those questions. Also, before each class, you should read (but not necessarily completely understand) the portion of the textbook pertaining to that day's material. In addition to helping you learn the course subject matter, this should help you develop general skills for reading and understanding written materials. Discussion should be an important part of each class, and you will not be able to participate effectively if you have not prepared. During discussions, I do not expect you always to have the "right answers", but I do expect you to have thoughtful contributions, and to try to give reasonable justifications for your answers.

Appropriate academic behavior

Students often have some confusion about what might or might not be considered "cheating" in a computer programming class. In general, we want you to take advantage of your instructors, teaching assistants, and fellow students in working out solutions to assignments. However, we also need to make sure that you are actually learning, and not simply using all of these resources as a crutch. As with writing a paper for an English class, there is a point at which working together becomes plagiarism. As a rule of thumb, if you find yourself turning in work that looks substantially like the work of someone else, you should seriously examine whether you have crossed the line. If you have any doubts, talk to your instructors before turning in the assignment.

In all cases, you must give credit to any source (like a written work or help from some individual) that you use to help complete an assignment. Again, this is similar to writing an English paper; if you use a quote or material from someone else, you have to give credit where credit is due. Otherwise you are inappropriately plagiarizing or borrowing ideas.

The lab instructor will set the specific policies cheating on the laboratory assignments.

Be an active learner

This is the first of many times that I will ask you to come see your instructors any time you have questions. Whether you are aware of it or not, one of the reasons you came to Colby is because we have relatively small classes, and faculty who are willing to take the time to help you learn when you ask. It frustrates us when we miss opportunities to pull students out of confusion.

This is particularly important in this course. All the concepts we will cover build on each other. If you find yourself stuck trying to understand something, it will only make catching up later that much worse. A former faculty member likened this class to a cruise ship. "If you stay on board, it can be quite pleasant. But if you fall overboard, you have to yell for help quickly, while we can still send back a lifeboat."

So take advantage of your instructors (and your fellow students and your teaching assistants). Ask questions in and out of class. I'll try to make the material as easy to digest as possible, but I'll need help identifying the things that are confusing you. But also note that you also won't know what you are confused about unless you keep up with the assigned work.

Randolph M. Jones (rjones@colby.edu)
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