Learning resources

CS staff

Without question, the greatest resource at your disposal is the CS staff. We are employed full-time to help you learn about CS. Never hesitate to ask for help!

Programming classwork

Each weekly assignment includes a programming portion. Additionally, students in self-paced study will have more programming assignments to complete. You will find these assignments are the most effective learning resource for this class. Take them very seriously!

• Collaboration: Strongly encouraged! On the weekly programming assignments, you may work in groups of up to three. Collaboration together is essential; you may not merely cooperate by splitting the assignment between group members. You may get some help from course staff and classmates, but the work must be primarily yours. List all collaborators and helpers on what you hand in.
• Help from staff: Encouraged! Feel free to buttonhole any of the course staff, any time, to talk about assignments or class material. To make this easier for you, we frequently visit the Baker Hall clusters to see if students can use our help. Sometimes this will be announced (in class or on the Web page); other times we may just drop in.
• Suggestion: Start early! Programming is notorious for almost always taking longer than expected. Also, starting early will avoid problems with computer and TA availability.
• Submissions: Your group's programming assignments must be submitted together electronically via the `Handin' Web page. The electronic deadline is 2:30 pm Monday.
• Solutions and evaluations: Soon after the deadline, we will post our solutions on the `Solutions' Web page. The course staff will evaluate your work; their evaluations will appear on the `Grades' Web page.
• Cheating: Not encouraged! By not giving grades, PGSS removes the only incentive to cheat. Any detected cheating cases will go straight to Dr Berget. Expulsion in such cases is likely. It's not worth it!

Written classwork

This class includes a weekly written assignment. Again, these are a vital learning resource for the class that you should take very seriously!

• Collaboration: Encouraged! Feel free to work with your classmates (or with course staff) about the written assignments as you search for a solution. You must write up your solution on your own, however, and you should not show your write-up to other students. Be sure to list all collaborators and helpers (including course staff) on what you hand in.
• Help from staff: Encouraged! Again, feel free to buttonhole any of the course staff, any time, to talk about the written work. We will also be happy to look over your write-up and indicate any significant shortcomings. (Do not have classmates look over them, however.)
• Submissions: Your written assignment may be submitted electronically (via the `Handin' Web page) or on paper (via the dorm mail room's CS box). The deadline is 2:30 pm Monday.

Quiz

At the end of PGSS, the course staff must evaluate your performance for the PGSS recommendation letter. A drawback of emphasizing groupwork so much on assignments is that there is no reliable individual evaluation mechanism. The final quiz at the end is meant to address this.

There will be a short, 15-minute quiz at the penultimate session of class. Let me tell you three reasons why you should not worry about this quiz.

• You may use both the textbook and any papers. (You cannot use computers, calculators, people, and especially tangerines.)
• The quiz will primarily emphasize what has appeared on the assignments. You should understand them already (after all, you completed them), but anyway it is a small amount to study. The 1998 quiz appears in this book on page ??.
• For the sake of argument, let's say the material has simply not clicked. Then no doubt the course staff has helped you many times. If, then, you perform poorly on the quiz, we will remember your struggle, and our evaluation will emphasize this, not quiz performance. (Of course, it's even better if you will do well enough that we can emphasize both struggle and success.)

Web page

The course Web page is a major component of course administration. Its address is (you might as well memorize it now): http://www.cburch.com/. This syllabus mentions much of Web page elsewhere, but there are a few other useful parts.

• Registration: Maintain your Web page account and password. This account is necessary for submitting assignments, reading evaluations, and completing polls. You will receive a registration ticket on the first day of class to allow you to create your account.
• Polls: Answer questions about how you would get the most from the CS core experience.
• Comment box: Submit anonymous comments to me about what would contribute to the CS core experience. Comments about any aspect of the course are welcome at any time, whether anonymous or not.
• Web links: Links to other sites on the Web relevant to the material we cover in class.

Lectures

• Questions: Asking questions during lecture is strongly recommended at all times! It is very easy to complacently sit back and become very lost, thinking you can get back on track later; but in fact getting back on track is often impossible. Don't let this happen! Ask questions when you begin to feel even vaguely that you are falling behind.
• Notes: I personally believe that note-taking (as commonly performed) often detracts from student understanding. If you find your own notes useful as a learning aid, go ahead. In case you would like to have a copy of notes during class for reference or annotation, anticipated notes will be available on the `Lecture' Web page by the evening before lecture in time for you to print them out.

Textbook

The self-study option is for students with a fair amount of computer programming background already (in any sophisticated programming language).

If you are eligible and select this option, instead of sitting in lecture studying the fundamentals of programming, you will be in the computer clusters (Baker 140) practicing. The CS TAs will be there to answer questions and to monitor your work. (Mr Carl Burch, who will be lecturing, regrets that he will be unable to attend.)

PGSS approves this option with certain restrictions:

1. The self-study option is available only to those who have significant programming background. More specifically, the student is expected to be somewhat comfortable at least with loops and arrays in some programming language.
2. You must be either at lecture or in Baker 140 during the scheduled class time. If you are in Baker 140, you must study CS. (You cannot defer self-study to other times.) The TAs will monitor and take attendance.
3. During this time, you will complete and submit exercises listed on the Web page. (Except for Programming Exercise 0, you may not work on the weekly assignments during class time.) Your submissions will be evaluated by the course staff and will count toward your final evaluation.
4. The TAs are there to answer any questions you have. In addition, we will often be in the cluster at other times to answer questions. And of course you should always feel free to stop any course staff, any time, to get help.