Syllabus for
Evan Golub's CMSC 131 Sections (010x)
Fall 2018
Section MWF Lecture MW Discussion
Discussion TA
0101
4:00pm-4:50pm (ESJ 0202)
8:00am- 8:50am (CSI 2120) David
0102
4:00pm-4:50pm (ESJ 0202)
2:00pm- 2:50pm (CSI 1121) Ishita
0103
4:00pm-4:50pm (ESJ 0202)
10:00am-10:50am (CSI 2120) Stephanie
0104
4:00pm-4:50pm (ESJ 0202)
11:00am-11:50am (CSI 2120) Stephanie
0105
4:00pm-4:50pm (ESJ 0202)
2:00pm- 2:50pm (CSI 2120) Corbin
0106
4:00pm-4:50pm (ESJ 0202)
9:00am- 9:50am (CSI 2120) David
0107
4:00pm-4:50pm (ESJ 0202)
10:00am-10:50am (CSI 1122) Corbin
0108
4:00pm-4:50pm (ESJ 0202)
11:00am-11:50am (CSI 1122) Ishita
Overview
This is a first course for Computer Science majors and minors with a focus on computational thinking and object-oriented programming. The goal of the course is to develop mental models to support the design, implementation, and testing of solutions to problems as well as the practical application of these via the implementation of programs in Java using a graphical IDE.
Pre/Co-requisites
Corequisite: Concurrently enrolled in MATH140.
Exams
Contact Information
Evan Golub :
1115 AV Williams Building :
egolub (at) glue (dot) umd (dot) edu
Voicemail 301-405-0180 but telephone is the worst way
to try to contact me.
The above e-mail is probably the best
(e-mail sent to addresses other than this one are likely not to be seen).
Office hours will be posted after the semester begins
and should start during the second week of classes.
During the first week of classes, I will be available after lecture
for questions.
Course Website
http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2018/cmsc131-010X
This website will be divided into sections for posting projects, examples, etc. Any official announcements will be posted here. You may receive e-mail informing you of emergency announcements, but you are responsible for checking this main class site regularly. While we will use ELMS for certain aspects of the course, we will not be using it for announcements or posting project descriptions.
GRACE accounts
To connect to the GRACE cluster that we will be using for projects
and some labs, you need to activate your TerpConnect account if it
is not already activated.
Visit the following link to activate or check on it:
https://cgi.oit.umd.edu/cgi-bin/account/activation.cgi.
Your TerpConnect account might not be available for a few days once you request it so that means you should go check/activate it today. You should see a message like "TerpConnect Activated" once your account is ready (or if it already is).
Campus Multi-Factor Authentication
Starting this semester, all students will be required to sign up
for and use multi-factor authentication (MFA) to access a variety of
services that use your university login. Resources such as ELMS
and the class grades.cs.umd.edu server are among these. That
means that before October 15th, you need to set up MFA. It is the
very strong recommendation of your instructor that you set this
up earlier, by September 15th, to get it out of the way since
access to resources such as these are essential.
The campus page about this is at
https://it.umd.edu/MFA.
In-class Technology
You will be required to have a Turning Technologies "Response Card RF" clicker unit (available at the bookstores) and activate your campus-provided TurningPoint Cloud account. We will start doing some practice polls from the first day (polls won't count for points until the second week of classes at the earliest). Details and links related to setting up your Turning Cloud account and physical clicker are on the main class webpage. Please make sure you register your clicker and activate your Turning Cloud account so you can check them during our trial polls at the start of the semester.
Clicker points cannot be retroactively given so
it is important to confirm that you are receiving your points during
the trial period at the start of the semester.
Recommended Text
We will be using an online version of a textbook that is available to UMD
students free of charge:
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4302-3687-0.
If you know you want to have a physical textbook to read, the one we suggest
is Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design and Data Structures
by John Lewis, Peter DePasquale, Joseph Chase.
I will not refer to either directly during the semester, but the discussion
and examples look like a good match for the course. Either the
first (ISBN 0321429729)
or
second (ISBN 0132128810)
or
third (ISBN 0133370461)
edition is fine if you go with the physical book.
Used copies of old editions seem to be readily available online at places like
Amazon
Major Topics (not strictly listed in order of presentation)
Assignments
There will be
seven major, individual, programming projects and
numerous other smaller coding exercises
as well as a written assignment.
The smaller coding exercises will be assigned to be worked on during the
lab sessions and
some of these lab exercises might be posted a day or two before that lab
so you can
try them on your own first if you'd like.
All of the individual programming projects are considered "closed"
assignments which you must complete by
yourself, coming to our office hours if needed.
On the smaller lab coding exercises you will be allowed to get help from
others outside of our office hours, but please remember this is not allowed
on the longer-term projects.
Policy Regarding Open/Closed Projects.
There will also be three semester exams, a final exam,
Clicker activities in class, and fairly regular quizzes
and aporés.
All quizzes are closed-book, closed-notes, individual work.
There will also be some aporés with an aporé after you
take these in lab under quiz conditions, they will be shuffled and
peer-annotated in lab as the teaching assistant reviews the answers to each
question.
Note that both
quizzes and aporés
are individual work and closed-note/book.
You will be told in advance whether you are taking a
quiz or an aporé.
The distribution of quizzes versus aporés will be
determined in part by participation levels on aporé days.
Machines
All assignments can be done on the machines of your choice. You are welcome to do the work on a home computer if you have one. There should not be any machine-specific dependencies in your code. However, if we are not able to run your program because there is a difference between your and our computer environments, you must work with us to get your program to work in our environment. You are expected to use the Eclipse IDE for all programming assignments.
Grading
The smaller lab coding exercises will typically be due by 10:59pm the day of the lab for which they are posted and worked on.
Many (if not most) programming projects will have both an intermediate deadline (discussed in the description of each project) and the working full project will be due by 7:59pm on the day they are due, with a 24-hour late period, during which late submissions will be automatically penalized 10 points. All coding exercises and projects are to be submitted electronically according to instructions given with the assignments, so please read them carefully. In general, no late projects will be accepted for credit after 24 hours though exceptional circumstances will be considered only if discussed with the instructor before the assignment is due. Final grades will be computed according the following weights. (These weights are tentative and subject to minor future adjustment if needed.)
Projects (7) 25% (projects will not all have the same weights) Quizzes/Lab/Paper 10% (grading items such as ELMS and lab quizzes, lab coding exercises, and the pitch paper) Clicker polling 5% Midterm #1 8% Midterm #2 11% Midterm #3 11% Final Exam 30%As you see above, there will be three semester exams, and a cumulative final exam. Question types include providing definitions of technical terms, explaining the application of terminology, and tracing and writing Java code. These are closed-book/closed-notes/closed-electronics individual-work written exams.
Grades will be assigned based on the following anticipated ranges. It should be noted that some range cut-offs may be shifted down based on results obtained during the semester, but they will not be shifted up. The very lower and very upper parts of each range will be reserved for any +/- grades.
Range Grade
90 - 100 A
80 - 89 B
70 - 79 C
60 - 69 D
0 - 59 F
Academic Honesty
All individual assignments/exams must be done individually. Student may not post their code (this includes places like github). Please visit the PDF of the UMD Code of Academic Integrity for a detailed explanation of what constitutes academic dishonesty. Note that it includes not only cheating, fabrication, and plagiarism, but also includes helping other students commit acts of academic dishonesty by allowing them to obtain copies of your work. In short, all submitted work must be your own.
Cases of academic dishonesty will be dealt with harshly. Each such case will be referred to the University's Office of Judicial Programs. If the student is found to be responsible of academic dishonesty, the typical sanction results in a special grade "XF", indicating that the course was failed due to academic dishonesty. More serious instances can result in expulsion from the university. If you have any doubt as to whether an act of yours might constitute academic dishonesty, please contact your one of the course instructors.
Excused Absence and Academic Accommodations
Any student who needs to be excused for an absence from a single quiz or lab exercise due to a medically necessitated absence shall:
This self-documentation may not be used for any Major Scheduled Grading Events, defined below, and it may only be used for only 1 quiz and for 1 lab exercise during the entire semester. Any student who needs to be excused for a prolonged absence (2 or more consecutive class meetings), for additional quizzes or lab exercises, or for a Major Scheduled Grading Event, must provide written documentation of the illness from the Health Center or from an outside health care provider. This documentation must verify dates of treatment and indicate the timeframe that the student was unable to meet academic responsibilities. In addition, it must contain the name and phone number of the medical service provider to be used if verification is needed. This documentation must be given to the instructor within a week of the student's return to classes.
The Major Scheduled Grading Events for this course include the three semester exams, the final exam, and the individual projects.
At the time the instructor is informed about the missed assessment, arrangements can be made for that Major scheduled Event. No projects will be excused - extensions in the due date are possible only if the illness was for a significant amount of time during the work time for that project (i.e. 1 or 2 days missed from a 2 week project will probably not result in an extension).
It is also the student's responsibility to inform the instructor of any intended absences from exams or class for religious observances or official University events during the first two weeks of the semester.
Disability Support Services
Any student eligible for and requesting reasonable academic accommodations due to a disability is requested to provide, to the instructor in office hours, a letter of accommodation from the Office of Disability Support Services within the first two weeks of the semester and the arrangements for individual exams must be made with the instructor at least one week in advance.
University Policies
There are general course related policies at the University with which you might want to become familiar.
Course Evaluations
The Department of Computer Science takes the student course evaluations very seriously. Evaluations for the Fall will usually be open during the first two weeks of December. Students can go to www.CourseEvalUM.umd.edu to complete their evaluations (usually in the last two weeks or so of the semester).
Copyright Notice
Class materials are copyrighted and may not be reproduced for anything other than for your personal use without written permission from instructor.
