Resources Grading Syllabus My Grades

Spring Semester 2004 A201 Web-Based Bulletin Board

A highlight of an active link means the document the link points to is in its final stage for this semester.

We are going to cover

The Wu book. Lecture and labs will be based on it. A companion volume of lecture notes is also available from McGraw-Hill. Entitled "Soaked in Java" it can be downloaded from here (covers listed separately). Here's a more comprehensive set of web notes (in HTML format).

Other resources:

• The Java Tutorial (at Sun Microsystems)
• The BlueJ Home Page
• The Java 1.4 API Class Hierarchy

Here are your instructors for the semester:

Adrian German Lecturer (dgerman) LH201D, 855-7860	Joe Tucker AI (jptucker)	Jeremy Engle AI (jtengle)	Stephanie Gato UI (sgato)	Geun-Tae Kim AI (geunkim)	Kristen Underwood UI (krlunder)	Sriram Raguraman AI (sraghura)	Shashi Penumarthy AI (sprao)	Steve Ganz AI (sganz)	Dave Gaunt Volunteer AI (Thanks Dave!)

Here also is a tentative list of assignments of labs and office hours:

1316

thu

lh025

6:50pm- 8:45pm

sprao

1317

thu

bh118

6:50pm- 8:45pm

sgato

sraghura

dgaunt

1318

fri

bh308

8:00am- 9:55pm

jtengle

geunkim

1320

fri

bh308

10:10am-12:05pm

sraghura

geunkim

1321

fri

bu407

11:15am- 1:10pm

sgato

jtengle

1322

fri

sb221

12:20pm- 2:15pm

sprao

krlunder

1323

fri

lh025

12:20pm- 2:15pm

jptucker

1324

fri

lh025

2:30pm- 4:25pm

jptucker

1325

fri

bh308

2:30pm- 4:25pm

krlunder

sganz

Office hours

when

R(10-12)

M(11-1)

MW(11-12)

W(2:30-4:30)

T(1-3)

M3:30-5:30

W1-3

MTWRF(2-3)

T(11:30-1:30)

where

LH201D

LH201D

LH310

LH201D

LH330A

LH201D

LH201D

LH201D

LH230A

dgerman

Grading Course grades will be (posted in OnCourse and will be) determined as follows:

Component	Weight
About 6 Homework Assignments	25%
About 14 Lab Assignments	30%
Midterm Exam One	10%
Midterm Exam Two	10%
Practical Exam	10%
Final Exam	15%
Lecture Minute Papers	5%
TOTAL	105%

The overall cutoff scale is as follows:

0-54	55-65	66-67	68-69	70-75	76-77	78-79	80-85	86-87	88-89	90-95	96-100
F	D	D+	C-	C	C+	B-	B	B+	A-	A	A+

Syllabus Here's a brief syllabus for A201/A597/I210 this semester:

1. Introduction.
2. Fundamental data types.
3. User-defined types.
4. Decisions.
5. Iteration.
6. More about methods.
7. Inheritance.
8. Arrays and vectors.
9. Algorithms.
10. Applets.
11. Basic event-handling.
12. Basic graphical user interfaces.
13. Introduction to threads.
14. Review of interfaces, abstract classes, exceptions.
15. Basic video game design with Java.
16. Case-study one: The alien landing game.
17. Case-study two: A penguin in an Iceblox world.
18. Networking with Java RMI (a truly amazing experiment).

Exams (and Grading, also see above):

Three written exams,

1. two midterms and
2. a final (both outside of class).

One practical exam,

1. (during one of the labs).

Each of the 14 labs comes with

1. a specific lab assignment
2. to be turned in for credit.

There are six homework assignments on

1. Types, expressions, basic statements, simple programs.
2. User-defined types.
3. Decisions and iteration.
4. Programming with Java arrays.
5. Graphics and event-handling in applets.
6. Basic data structures (arrays, Vectors and Hashtables).

Minute papers collected every lecture count towards final grade.

There are multiple-choice exercises posted for practice in QuizSite.

All weekly reading assignments will be posted on the website before the end of the first week of classes.

Structure of labs (115 minutes long each):

The AI uses the first 15-20 minutes to go through the entire class and individually takes attendance, greets students to the lab, and asks each student to identify one or two most outstanding questions (s)he might have about the current or forthcoming lab and homework assignment. Thus the AI builds a set of FAQ for the lab, each lab, and soon learns the names of all students in the lab.

The AI combines the answers into a 20-30 min presentation which may involve student participation. The presentation is blending the topic for the day (predetermined) with the answers to the FAQ collected by the ad-hoc survey.

Last 60-70 minutes of the lab the AI again goes through the entire set of students and checks that the lab assignment has been understood (including details of submission of work in OnCourse). During the lab may have to run programs and answer questions, so come as prepared as you can. Although labs are primarly for learning, and not for testing, we think that what we cannot create we cannot understand, and whatever we learn we learn by doing, also that programming is not a spectator sport, so the approach we take is active learning.

Basic grading scale for the lab (details can vary from lab to lab):

25-45 points for showing up (depends on the lab)
up to 10 points for initial interaction (for the FAQ)
(4, 3, 2, or 1) x 10-20 points (depends on the lab) if the program is worth an A, B, C, or D.

Note: 95 is the highest A, 90 is the lowest. Points above 95 are only given for student work that is of such quality that it makes the AI want to share it with the entire class. Grade cutoffs are posted on the website, above.

Labs are meant to stimulate participation and encourage learning.

Exams and (to a significant extent) homework assignments are the main testing instruments used in the class.