Course Policies: CS 104: Applied Programming at Calvin College

Instructor: Professor Victor Norman (and Professors Bailey and Sykes for labs)

Course Text:

• How to Think Like a Computer Scientist

This book is an open-source, online, interactive textbook. No registration required.

Other Required Resources:

• A smart phone, if you have one, to run the Socrative.com Student app.
• Registration ($25) to the online problem set site Turings Craft CodeLab. Information about this will be given in the first lab.

Grading: Your grade in this course will be determined as follows:

• Reading Quizzes: 10%
  • Administered with the Socrative.com at the beginning of class each Tuesday.
• Labs: 35%
  • We will usually do 2 labs each Lab Period. You should be able to finish most of them during class time.
• TuringsCraft CodeLab: 10%
  • To receive full credit, they must be done before lab each week, completely and correctly. Partial credit is given if most are done, all are done late, etc. For those of you with lab on Tuesdays, they must be done before midnight on Thursday.
• Exams: 45%
  • Test 1: 10%
  • Test 2: 15%
  • Test 3 (final exam): 20%
  • Test are cumulative -- i.e., everything on Test 1 will be testable on Test 2, etc.
    

Course Organization:

Tuesday:

• Reading Quiz: 3 questions usually. Administered with Socrative.com. If you are late to class, you may miss this and lose points.
• I will introduce the Learning Objectives for the week -- these are the concepts that you should understand by the end of the week, and which were covered in the reading. All Learning Objectives are here.
• Short lectures interspersed with clicker questions ("Peer-instruction").
• You will be assigned to work through a set of online exercises on turingscraft.com. These are due by lab time on Thursday. (Thursday 11:59:59.999pm, for those with lab on Tuesday.)

Thursday (2 hr lab) (Tuesday 2 hr lab, for some):

• Taught by Prof. Pat Bailey or Prof. Aubrey Sykes.
• Room: SB 337 ("Systems Lab").
• We may go over some of the TuringsCraft exercises.
• We will work on the weekly lab assignments.
• In general, do not plan on going to whatever lab section you want to. There are ~24 assigned to each lab section and there are 24 seats in the lab.

Friday, Saturday, or Monday:

• You do the reading for the next week.

Policies:

Attendance: attendance is optional. However, you will do poorly if you skip class regularly (this has been proven time and time again). If you miss a quiz, you will receive a 0. If you will miss class due to illness or some other legitimate reason, you must inform me (via email: vtn2@calvin.edu) before class that you will miss class that day.

Class Rules:

• Laptop use is not allowed, except by special permission. This is due to a few studies that show that when someone uses a laptop in class, the grades of the people around them go down more than their grade goes down.
• Cell phone usage in class is strictly prohibited, except when we are doing Socrative.com Q and A.
  
  
  
  You do not need to check your cell phone during class. Don't put it on the desk -- put it away. Each semester I have to chew out a few students for checking their cell phones during class. Pretend you don't own one during class. Tell your friends that during class, you
  • have no connection,
  • have lost your cell phone,
  • don't like them and don't want them to text you,
  • have a really mean professor who lives in the dark ages and doesn't understand that without your cell phone you are only half a person,
  • have a really nice professor who cares so deeply about your learning that he wants you to not be distracted at all so that you can do your very best.
    

Late assignments: Due dates for assignments will be in moodle, although in general, assignments are not submitted via moodle. Assignments are due at midnight on the due date.  Assignments that are submitted within 1 business day after the due date will have 10% deducted.  2 business days = 20%, 3 days = 30%, etc.

A word to the wise: Note that people who are new to computer programming sometimes think they can do an assignment at the last minute and get it working.  But, computer programming is not like writing a paper, where you can have undeveloped or faulty arguments, missing sections, etc., and still have something that is “pretty good”.  In computer programming, if something isn’t working, you can’t fake it and hope for the best.  It either works or it doesn’t, and it is often very easy to tell…

Office Hours / Help outside of class: I will inform you of official office hours, but geneally, I am happy to help you whenever I am in my office. My weekly schedule is posted here.

If you need help with an assignment, please come ask for help.  I love to help students who come to me.  However, if the assignment is due that day or the next day AND you have not started, I will not look kindly upon your predicament.  I’ll probably help you, but I'll be grouchy.  One of my goals is to help students to learn to NOT do everything at the last minute.  I know that goes against some of your philosophies of life.  Sorry...

Disability statement: Calvin will make reasonable accommodations for persons with documented disabilities. Students should notify the Coordinator of Services to Students with Disabilities located in Student Academic Services, HH455. Students should notify their instructors within the first two weeks of class.

Working together / cheating:  1) Don't cheat.  2) You may work in pairs when doing the lab assignments.  3) You may, and often should, collaborate in discussion, design, and debugging for projects.  However, you must write your own code for the homework.  Each semester some students try to cheat and they are usually caught.  Take note.

My disability: I am deaf on my left side.  I wear a hearing aid, but it really doesn't help too much.  I appreciate students who speak loudly enough for me (and the whole class) to hear.  Thanks.