The University of Western Ontario
London, Canada

Department of Computer Science

CS026a Computer Science Fundamentals I

Course Outline - Fall 2006

Course Description

This course provides an introduction to the basic concepts of computer programming and program design. It is intended for students in the Faculty of Science and those who intend to study Computer Science in senior years. Programming skills will be developed using the Java programming language. Course topics include objects, object oriented design, variables, modularity, primitive types, classes, and problem solving techniques. A multimedia approach will be taken in examining these topics, through the use of images, sound, and video.

Course Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites to CS026. However, programming experience is an asset. If you feel you have significant programming experience you may consider taking CS025. A website, the CS025/CS026 Self Placement Guide, has been developed to assist you with your decision.

Course Website

The address of the CS026a website is http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS026a. Assignments and course-related information will be posted on this website. It is the responsibility of the student to check this website often.

Course Instructors

Section	Instructor	Phone	Email	Office Hours
001	M. Katchabaw MC-28H	519-661-4059	katchab @csd.uwo.ca	TU. 1:30-2:30pm TH. 12:30-1:30pm
002	M. Bauer MC-28A-1	519-661-3562	bauer @csd.uwo.ca	MO: 12:30-1:30pm WE: 12:30-1:30pm

Course Schedule

Section	Room	Times
001	P&AB 215	TU. 11:30-1:30pm TH. 11:30-12:30pm
002	NCB 117	TU. 3:30-5:30pm TH. 3:30-4:30pm

Required Text

One book is required for this course, and is available for purchase from the University Bookstore on campus. A copy of this book will be made available on 2 hour reserve loan from the Allyn and Betty Taylor Library.

• Introduction to Computing and Programming with Java: A Multimedia Approach, by M. Guzdial and B. Ericson, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007, ISBN 0-13-149698-0.

Lecture Notes

Course lecture notes will be made available in PowerPoint and PDF formats on the course website on a regular basis. They are provided as a courtesy by the course instructors. Possessing (and even reading) these notes is not a suitable substitute for attending lectures.

TA Help Hours

Teaching Assistants and their consulting hours for CS026 will be posted on the course website and announced during the second week of the term.

Computing Facilities

Each student enrolled in CS026 will be given an account on the Computer Science Department First Year Network. By using your CS026 account, you agree to abide by the Rules of Ethical Conduct established by the Department of Computer Science.

Email Contact

We will regularly need to send email messages to the class or to students individually. Email will be sent to the UWO email address assigned to students by Information Technology Services (ITS). It is the responsibility of the student to read this email on a regular basis. You may wish to have mail forwarded to to an alternative email address. See the ITS website for instructions on forwarding email.

However, you should note that email at ITS (your UWO account) and other email providers such as hotmail.com or yahoo.com may have quotas or limits on the amount of space they can use. If you let your email accumulate there, your mailbox may fill up and you may lose important email from your instructors. Losing email that you have forwarded to an alternative email address is not an excuse for not knowing about the information that was sent.

Students are encouraged to contact their course instructor via email with brief, appropriate questions regarding lecture materials or clarification on assignments. However, before sending email to an instructor, the student should verify the course website to see if the requested information is already there. Students must send email from their UWO ITS account and include CS026 in the subject line of the email.

Student Evaluation (tentative dates)

Element	Weight	Due Date or Held on
Labs	10%	Weekly throughout the term
Assignment 1	8%	Week of Oct. 9 2006
Assignment 2	10%	Week of Oct. 23 2006
Assignment 3	12%	Week of Nov. 13 2006
Assignment 4	15%	Week of Dec. 4 2006
Mid-Term	15%	2 Hours, October 28, 2006 from 9:00-11:00am, NS 1 and NS 7
Final	30%	3 Hours, TBA, Scheduled by Registrar's Office

If for any reason the assignment schedule given cannot be adhered to, the assignment marks will be prorated. (The four assignments are worth 45% of the overall mark for the course. If an assignment has to be cancelled for any reason, the remaining assignment weights will be prorated to add up to 45%.)

To be eligible to receive a passing grade in the course, your mark on the final exam must be at least 40%, and your weighted average on the assignments must be at least 40%. Otherwise, the maximum overall mark you can receive is 45%. To be eligible to receive a grade of C or higher, your mark on the final exam must be at least 50%, and your weighted average on the assignments must be at least 50%. Otherwise, the maximum overall mark you can receive is 58%.

Labs

The purpose of the weekly labs is to give students guided, hands-on experience with Java programming. It is expected that students will come prepared to the labs. Lab instructions will be available on the CS026 course website in advance, and students must bring a hard copy to the lab.

• Labs begin the week of September 11, 2006.
• There will be 12 labs.
• Labs are mandatory. Each completed lab is worth 1% of your final grade.
• Since there are 12 labs in total, and there is only 10% of your final grade allocated towards lab, this means that you do not need to complete 2 of the labs. (There are no bonus marks for successful completion of all 12 labs.)
• Students must attend the labs for which they are registered. There are no make-up labs and students who are absent for a lab do not have the option of attending another lab; however, if a student encounters serious health or other personal difficulties, they are encouraged to contact their Dean's office.
• Students must bring their UWO identification to all labs and exams.

Assignments

Important notes and policies on assignments:

• Instructions for the submission of assignments will be posted on the course website. It is each student’s responsibility to read and follow the instructions. Failure to follow the submission instructions may result in the assignment receiving a mark of zero.
• You may also be required to submit each programming assignment electronically. Details will be given in the assignment descriptions. We reserve the right to use similarity detection software to detect possible cheating cases.
• The date and exact time assignments are due will be given in the assignment specifications.

The late penalty for assignments is 10% per day late, for a maximum of 2 days, after which assignments will not be marked. Weekends count as one day of lateness.

• No extensions will be given for assignments; however, if a student has serious medical or compassionate grounds, they should take supporting documentation to the Office of the Dean of their faculty and their instructor will be contacted.
• It is each student’s responsibility to keep up-to-date backups of assignment disk files in case of system crashes or inadvertently erased files. Students must keep disk copies of all material submitted, as well as the actual graded assignment, to guard against the possibility of errors in recording marks. It is not safe to discard these materials until you are satisfied that your final mark for the course has been computed properly.
• Assignments are marked by the Teaching Assistants, who follow marking schemes provided by instructors. We will attempt to include some information about the marking criteria in the assignment descriptions.

A request for adjustment in an assignment mark must be made within 2 weeks of the date on which it was first available after marking. (Beyond that date, regrading will not be considered, regardless of whether you retrieved your assignment.) Such a request must be submitted in writing, and must include specific reasons why you believe you deserve more marks. The request must be accompanied by all materials that were originally handed in, as well as the original marker's grade summary sheet. Regrading requests will take a minimum of 24 to 48 hours to process; you will be informed when it is complete.

You should direct any questions about marking in the first instance to your Teaching Assistant, and then to your course instructor if the discussion with the Teaching Assistant is not satisfactory.

Exams

Important notes and policies on exams:

• There is a midterm exam and a final exam. Both exams are closed book. No calculators or reference materials are allowed.
• Students must bring their UWO identification to the exams.
• There will be no makeup midterm exam, except for students requesting a special midterm exam for religious reasons. These students must have notified the course instructor and filed documentation with their Dean's Office at least 2 weeks prior to the midterm exam. If there are other serious medical or compassionate grounds for missing the midterm exam, please take supporting documentation to the office of the Dean of your faculty, who will contact the instructor. In such cases, the weight of your midterm exam will be shifted to the final exam, which would then be worth 50% of your final overall grade.
• The final exam is scheduled by the Office Registrar during the final exam period. Details will be provided when they are available. Students are advised not to make travel plans until they have consulted the final exam schedule.
• As an important note, computer-marked multiple-choice tests and/or exams may be subject to submission for similarity review by software that will check for unusual coincidences in answer patterns that may indicate cheating.

Course, Department, and University Policies on Ethical Conduct

Other important course, department, and university policies include the following:

• Plagiarism: Students must write their assignments (or essays) in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offense (see Scholastic Offense Policy in the Western Academic Calendar).
• All assignments are individual assignments. You may discuss approaches to problems among yourselves, however, the actual details of the work (assignment coding, answers to concept questions, etc.) must be an individual effort.
• The standard departmental penalty for assignments that are judged to be the result of academic dishonesty is, for the student's first offense, a mark of zero for the assignment, with an additional penalty equal to the weight of the assignment also being applied. You are responsible for reading and respecting the Departmental policy on Scholastic Offenses and Rules of Ethical Conduct.
• The University of Western Ontario uses software for plagiarism checking. Students may be required to submit their written work in electronic format for this purpose.
• The role of tutoring is to help students understand course material. Tutors should not write assignments or take-home tests for the students who hire them. Having employed the same tutor as another student is not a legitimate defense against an accusation of collusion, should two students hand in assignments judged similar beyond the possibility of coincidence.