CMPS 5J - Fall 2017 - Introduction to Programming in Java

Instructor Information

Charlie McDowell

Office: E2 349B

Office Hours: Monday 1-2, Thursday 1:30-2:30

E-mail: mcdowell@ucsc.edu

Online Support Systems

We will be using three online support systems.

The Canvas course managment system is where you will complete homework in the form of online "quizzes", submit lab assignments, submit your programming logs for the programming assignments, and find all of your scores collected in one place.

CrowdGrader is where you will submit the source code for your programming assignments and where you will go to review the submissions of your classmates.

Piazza is where you will go to submit and answer questions related to the class online. The system is highly tailored to getting you help fast and efficiently from classmates, the TA, and myself. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, I encourage you to post your questions on Piazza. If you have any problems or feedback for the developers, email team@piazza.com.

Lab Information

Lab attendance counts for 5 percent of the grade. It is strongly recommended that you plan to attend lab regularly. This is a time to complete the short lab exercises due most weeks, to work on your programming assignments with your partner (see below), get help from me, and get help from other members of the class. Do NOT expect to generally be able to complete the programming assignments during just your assigned lab section. You should plan to meet with your partner outside of scheduled lab time. You cannot learn to program without doing it, and lab time is an excellent time to practice with someone around to help you.

You are welcome to drop in on other lab sections to get extra help, but for the lab attendance part of the grade you must attend the lab in which you are enrolled. For full credit you must not be more than 10 minutes late and must not leave more than 10 minutes before the scheduled end of the lab.

There will be no makeups for missed labs, however, everyone gets one free day. There are 9 lab sessions in which lab attendance is taken. If you attend 8 of those 9 you will receive 100% of the lab attendance credit. 

Text:

Required:

Learning Processing. 2nd Edition D. Shiffman

iClicker (any iClicker will do including the original, also iClicker2 and iClicker+. Look for used ones on online shopping sites)

Evaluation:

Your grade will be the best of the following two (you don't have to choose).

• Lab attendance (5%)
• Class Participation with iClickers (5%)
• Programming assignments (10%).
• Homework (review questions) and Lab assignments (20%).
• Weekly quizzes (30%).
• Final (30%).
• OR
• Lab attendance (5%)
• Class Participation with iClickers (5%)
• Programming assignments (10%).
• Homework (review questions) and Lab assignments (20%).
• Weekly quizzes (20%).
• Final (40%).

A minimum of 50% on each component of the grade is necessary but not sufficient to pass this class. This means, if you receive less than 50% on any one of these you will not pass, however, just because you score at least 50% on each does not imply that you will necessarily pass. You cannot pass this class if you do not do the programming assignments, or do not do the review questions, or score less than 50% on the final or quizzes.

Opting out of the final exam

In addition to the two variations above, any student that scores 80% or more on average for all five quizzes may elect to have their quiz scores used as their final exam score. Note that the quiz grade is normally computed by dropping the lowest quiz score (best four out of five) but that for opting out of the final all five quiz scores will be used (not dropping of the lowest). To elect this option simply send an email to the instructor at least 24 hours before the final exam. You are also advised to get email confirmation from the instructor that indeed your 5 quiz average is above 80%.

If you take the final exam, it will be scored and counted. You cannot make this decision after seeing or taking the final exam.

Working Together:

The programming projects are to be done in two person teams following the pair programming guidelines. You will be assigned a new partner from your same lab section for each assignment. New lab partner assignments will be posted the same day that assignments are due. The normal policy is for all students to be assigned new partners after each project, however, if you feel strongly that you want to continue with your current partner or request a specific partner, you may make your request at www.soe.ucsc.edu/~charlie/programmingPartners. Both partners must make the request, and it will require a review and approval by the instructor. In addition to indicating your partner preference at the URL above, you should also email the instructor with a brief explanation of why you believe you should be allowed to work with the requested partner. Please make sure the subject for that email message is "partner request" (exactly like that). This will allow the instructor to automatically save those emails into a single folder for review.

You may freely give and receive help with the computer facilities, editors, debugging techniques, the meaning and proper use of Java constructs, built-in functions, etc.. You should not discuss your design or implementation of the programming assignments with students other than your partner until after they are turned in. In particular you should not view another person/pair's program, or allow someone (other than your partner) to view any part of your program, prior to the due date for that assignment. Obviously, copying any part of another person/pair's program, or allowing your program to be copied is not permitted. A program, Moss, will be in use to detect copying. If you have any questions on this important point, please see me.

If you should happen to use some actual code you got from someone other than your partner (such as the TA or some tutor or a previous partner or your room mate or on online resource) you MUST credit that person with a comment preceding the code in question (see "Giving Credit Where Credit is Due"). This could also come up if you were discussing a program with another student from the class and ended up writing some code on scrap paper or a white board. The safe and proper thing to do in this situation would be to insert a comment in your program where that code snippet is used. At worst you might lose a few percentage points if it was a really key part of the assignment. Failure to draw attention to the code snippet with a comment could result in a charge of academic dishonesty. Give credit where credit is due.

It is highly recommended that you read

All I Really Need to Know about Pair Programming I Learned In Kindergarten

Academic Dishonesty:

Any confirmed academic dishonesty including but not limited to copying programs or cheating on exams, will constitute a failure of the computer ethics portion of this class and may result in a no-pass or failing grade. You are encouraged to read the campus policies regarding academic integrity.

Programming Projects:

Everyone should submit their own programming log by pasting the log into the text area provided in ecommons for the assignment. The log should be created by copying and modifying as appropriate, one of the template logs from log templates.

CrowdGrader will not accept any late assignments. Late programs will be accepted up to 24 hours late via Canvas (attach the source file). Such programs will be penalized 20% regardless of whether it is 1 minute late or the full 24 hours late. You do NOT need to attach your source file in Canvas if you have submitted it on time to CrowdGrader. You can submit repeatedly in CrowdGrader so don't wait to the last minute. Your latest submission is the one that will be graded. In addition, you and your partner should both submit the file in CrowdGrader. Whichever is submitted last will be the one that is graded.

The programs you submit this quarter should be original programs created just for this class. It is NOT acceptable to submit programs that you (or someone else) has written previously. As indicated above, if you incorporate any portions of programs written by someone else, or by you for a prior course or assignment, then that should be clearly noted in the program via comments. (See "Giving Credit Where Credit is Due".)

Quizzes

There will be a quiz every other week on Fridays at the start of class. See the class Schedule for details.

If you qualify for classroom accommodations because of a disability, please get an Accommodation Authorization from the Disability Resource Center (DRC) and submit it to your instructor (Charlie McDowell) in person outside of class (e.g., office hours) within the first two weeks of the quarter. Contact DRC at 459-2089 (voice), 459-4806 (TTY), or http://drc.ucsc.edu for more information on the requirements and/or process.