This syllabus is subject to change; check weekly for new information.

Professor: Terry Harvey

Email: tharvey at udel.edu

Office: 408 Smith Hall

Office Hours: Mon 1:00 - 3:00, Fri 8:30 - 10:30

Appointments: if you can't make office hours, email me for an appt.

Phone: don't call, email!

Email will get a faster response for questions, appts, etc. Only use the phone for emergencies when you have no access to email (e.g., "I am in Mesopotamia and will miss today's exam.").

Teaching Assistants:

Mayah McCutchen

Email: mayahmcc at udel

Office Hours: Tuesdays 3:30-4:30 Wednesday 9-10am

David Geron-Neubauer

Email: davidgn at udel

Office Hours: Mondays 3:30-4:30, and Wednesdays 10:10-11:10 TA office hours are held in Smith 201.

This term we will be using Piazza for class discussion. The system is designed to get 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. Questions are always welcome in class and lab.

Find our class page at: https://piazza.com/udel/spring2016/cisc181080/home

This course has a mandatory co-requisite of Math 241 or higher and a prerequisite of C- or better in CISC 106 or 108.

Required Textbooks (click)

Useful Links

Important dates, subject to change:

3/16 Midterm 1
? Project 1 due
4/18 Midterm 2
? Project 2 due
5/? Final Exam

Grade Breakdown

  Percent of grade
Two midterms 13 + 15
Quizzes 5
Final 20
Labs 12
2 Projects 10 + 15
Participation + clicker 10
Total 100

Grade Scale

Number

100-93

93-90

90-87

87-83

83-80

80-77

77-73

73-70

70-67

67-63

63-60

<60

Letter

A

A-

B+

B

B-

C+

C

C-

D+

D

D-

F

Final letter grade rule: Your final grade cannot be more than one letter grade higher than your exam average. This is to ensure mastery of fundamental skills.

If you have a disability that requires special accommodation, please contact me by email (tharvey at udel.edu) during the first week of class.


NOTE:  Students are required to attend ALL lab sessions.  Submitted work must be handed in according to the instructions on the lab. Labs are usually due online at midnight. Assignments that are late are assessed a 10% per day late penalty, and after seven days they will not be accepted. Saturday and Sunday are each days. This policy is necessary because late assignments are burdensome for the TAs, both in terms of separate handling and separate time grading.

One quarter of the semester lab grade will be a lab attendance grade. This grade is marked by your TA based on each lab. Marks on Sakai will be either 1:present, 2: excused (by the professor and in advance), 3:late, and 4:absent. Students who depart early will also be marked 3 for "left early" for missing part of lab. More than 15 minutes late constitutes absence.


NOTE: Students are required to attend ALL lectures. I may make announcements in class that I do not post on the website. I may put lecture slides on the web, but these are not a substitute for class notes. Many classes will have no lecture slides because we will be coding. It is your responsibility to get the notes from any lecture you miss from another student (not your instructor, and not your TA). Lecture material is critical for projects and exams, and useful everywhere else.

Your participation grade is based (surprise!) on your participation in lecture. If you show up to every lecture and sit quietly and attentively, you can expect to get ONE out of five possible points. To get five points, politely ask and answer at least one question in every class. If you are unable to do this because of extreme shyness, see me during office hours in the first two weeks of the semester.

Your clicker grade is based on the number of times you respond out of the number of opportunities. It is not based on the quality of your answers, just the number, so please click. That said, take it seriously: if you deliberately thwart my attempts to measure class knowledge, your grade will suffer.

A Note About Programming Conventions


Every organization that writes code (and does it well) subscribes to a set of conventions for naming variables, commenting, formatting, etc. 

Our class will have a style sheet posted on the class website. You must adhere to the specifications of the style sheet to receive full credit for an assignment.

"What happens if we don't do this?"

Horrible things happen. A program that works perfectly but does not have the features described in the style sheet cannot receive a grade higher than 60%, even assuming it is flawless in every other way.

Your Right to See and Question Your Grades

Students have a right to receive their graded assignments in a timely fashion. That said, remember that your TAs are students too, and have deadlines in other courses. The instructor and TAs will endeavor to get all assignments back to students within ten days of the submission date. If this date is not met, please bring it to the attention of the instructor.

All students have the right to know how their grades are calculated, and if any student believes a mistake has been made, it is up to the student to contact the grader to discuss it within ONE WEEK of the return of the assignment. Contact the TA first for labs and projects. If you are not satisfied after discussing the grade with the TA, then you may bring it to the instructor. Bring exams directly to the instructor.

The grade percentages are on this syllabus. Please use them to calculate estimates of your semester grade. This class typically has little or no curve.

Academic Honesty

I expect you to observe the highest ethical standards, avoiding even the perception of ethical compromise.  You are expected to do your own work unless explicitly instructed otherwise.  If you work in pairs or teams on an assignment, then your team must do its own work. This includes programming projects, labs, quizzes, and examinations.  All violations of academic honesty will be handled according to University policy.

In addition, copying another person's or team's work without proper acknowledgment is plagiarism, a serious offense, and the one most common to computer science courses.  Anyone that aids another student with work that is expected to be done without collaboration is as guilty as the person who seeks help. Both will be prosecuted. It is strongly recommended that you familiarize yourself with the University's Policy of Academic Dishonesty found in The Student Guide to University Policies.

Any student who in any way facilitates another student's access to someone else's classwork is cheating, whether the classwork is written, electronic, verbal, or any other form.

Furthermore, there have been rare instances of people claiming that their work was stolen. In these cases it is very hard to determine if the person gave their work to someone else, or if it was taken without their permission. If there is any doubt, I will always assume that the work was deliberately shared. It is thus your responsibility to safeguard your papers, your passwords, your computers, and any other means by which your work can be copied.

All students are required to be familiar with these examples: Academic Honesty Examples