Syllabus

ICS/CSE 23

Winter 2010

Course Summary

Prerequisites

Instructor

Prof. Sandy Irani
Office: DBH 4042
Office Hours: W 2:00PM-2:50PM, F 9:00AM-9:50AM
Email: last name at ics dot uci dot edu

Teaching Assistant

Shengyue Ji
Office: TBA
Office Hours: TBA
Email: first name at uci dot edu

Meeting Places and Times

Lecture will be held MWF 10:00-10:50 in ICS 174. You are responsible for anything said in class, including class announcements. If you have to miss lecture for any reason, please ask one of your classmates to fill you in on what you missed.

There are two lab sections for this class. Each lab section has three scheduled hours in the lab. During these times, you have a guaranteed seat in the lab. Note, however, you only have priority over other students if you are working on class work (i.e. not playing games). Shenhyue will be available in the lab during these times to answer questions. This is an ideal opportunity to get some help with your lab homework in front of a computer.

There are several department labs which you can use for working on your lab assignments. Information about the locations and hours of the labs can be found at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~lab . Keep in mind that some of these labs may be reserved for other classes during the day, so you may not have first priority to these machines at all times. It is possible that the labs will be very crowded on the day an assignment is due. It is your responsibility to take this into account as I can not accept crowded labs as an excuse for late lab assigments.

Obtaining Assistance

The best way to get your questions answered is by coming to lecture, office hours or lab and asking them there. In general, if I'm not busy with something else, I am happy to answer short questions while I am in my office, so feel free to stop by during other times in the week.

All email with questions about course material should be sent to the following email address: ics23-questions@ics.uci.edu. This is an alias for the instructor and the TA. It ensures that we both see your message and the response. It also gives you better turnaround time.

  • Please also include the following information:

    If you are experiencing difficulties in the lab with the equipment, let the lab attendant know. If they can not solve the problem, they will contact support.

    Course Announcements

    Assignments

    Lab assignments will be due every two weeks at Friday 5PM. Please see the Lab Manual for instructions on handing in assignments and policies on late assignments.

    Weekly quizes: I will give a very short weekly quiz at the beginning of class every Monday. Since we have two Monday holidays, we will make up those quizes on the preceding Friday. Here are a list of quiz days:

    Monday January 11
    Friday January 15
    Monday January 25
    Monday February 1
    Monday February 8
    Friday February 12
    Monday February 22
    Monday March 1
    Monday March 8

    The quizes will last approximately 10 minutes and will be given out at the beginning of lecture. They will cover material from the preceding week. On the two occasions that quizes are given Friday, they will cover material from lectures on Monday and Wednesday. In determining your course score, I will drop the lowest two quiz scores. However, these dropped scores are intended to cover any missed quizes for whatever reason you need to miss a quiz. This includes any medical problems, personal issues or school-related events.

    I will grade the quizes and Shenhyue will grade the lab assignments. If you have questions regarding grading, please see the person who graded that particular item.

    Text

    We have one required text for this course.

    You may also find it useful to purchase a Java reference book if you do not already have one. Different styles suit different people, so I will leave it up to you to select your own.

    Course Structure

    The grading criteria for the course is:

    Missed Final Exam Policy

    Academic Dishonesty

    As ICS 23 students, you are expected to know and follow the academic dishonesty policies of both the ICS School and the University as a whole. Please take a few minutes to read the policies, which can be found at this link.

    All of your lab work is expected to be completed solely by you. Group work and/or sharing of code between students is not permitted. Note that "high-level discussion of course material for better understanding" is permitted and encouraged, but when it comes time to sit down and write code, that is expected to be done by you and you alone. All submissions are compared to one another using an automated plagiarism detection system. This system is extraordinarily good at finding similarities between submissions, even when there are superficial differences. (Note that we also compare your submissions to those submitted during previous quarters whenever one of these assignments was given during a previous quarter, so it is an exceedingly bad idea to turn in, or even refer to, code written by a friend of yours who took the course already.)

    Since all of your work is expected to be completed solely by you, you will be held responsible even if you plagiarize only a small portion of someone else's project.

    Academic dishonesty is a two-way street. Providing your code to other students for them to turn in as their own is not permitted anymore than turning in someone else's code. Resist the temptation to give code to your friends "for reference." Based on my experience, I can say that your "friends" may very well betray you and turn it in, anyway.

    Violators of academic dishonesty policies are subject to the penalties described in the ICS School's policy. They are also subject to an immediate course grade of F, and you will not be allowed to drop the course to avoid the grade. Also be aware that a single documented case of academic dishonesty may preclude you from switching into the ICS major, registering for the ICS minor, joining the ICS Honors Program, and graduating from ICS with honors.