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

Professor: James Atlas

Email: jatlas at udel.edu

Office Location: Smith 415

Office Hours: T (1PM - 4PM) R (1PM - 4PM)

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

Teaching Assistants:

TA office hours are held in Smith 103.
name email @ cis.udel.edu lab sections office hours
Sandeep Nagaraj nagaraj 21,22 TBD
Scott Grauer-Gray grauerg 20 TBD

Course Topics:

Lectures

Useful Links

Important dates, subject to change:

March 15 Midterm 1
March 17 Project 1 assigned
April 26 Project 2 assigned
April 28 Midterm 2
TBD Final Exam

Grade Breakdown

  Percent of grade
Two midterms 10 + 10
Final 20
Quizzes 10
Labs 20
Two Projects 10 + 10
Participation 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 + quiz average. This is to ensure mastery of fundamental skills.

If you have a disability that requires special accommodation, please contact me by email during the first week of class.


NOTE:  Students are required to attend ALL lab sessions.  TAs will be taking attendence during lab sessions. TAs will also be awarding participation points to students who help their peers during lab sessions. Submitted work must be submitted no later than 11:55pm on the Tuesday it is due.  Assignments that are late are assessed a 10% per day late penalty, and after four days they will not be accepted. Saturday and Sunday are each days. This policy is necessary because late assignments are burdensome for the TA, both in terms of separate handling and separate time grading.

NOTE:  ALL labs and projects will be submitted, graded, and returned through Sakai.


NOTE: Students are required to attend ALL lectures. I may make announcements in class that I do not post on the website. I will 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 on your participation in lecture, your participation in lab, and on your contribution to group projects.

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 and templates posted on the class website. You must adhere to the specifications of the style sheet to receive full credit for an assignment.

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, homework, 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.  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 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 Official Student Handbook.

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.

Group or pair work is subject to the same rules, applied between groups or pairs.

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

Acknowledgment: This syllabus borrows heavily from Prof. Harvey's.