As just noted, some versions of printed text have a code in them that will let you get a copy of the electronic version of the text; some do not; both are apparently available at the bookstore. If you do get a book from the bookstore, you only need one or the other of the versions, not both. If you buy a used copy of the book, it does matter which version you buy: the registration code, even if present, is not valid.

To get to the electronic version of the text:

• If you do not have a registration code, follow these next three steps (otherwise, skip them):

  • Go to the the WileyPlus courses web page, computer science section. Then click on Horstmann / Big Java Third Edition AND Java Concepts Fifth Edition, WileyPLUS Registration Code; be sure to pick this link and not other, similar ones in the vicinity.

  • The next screen has a box to choose a State; choose California. There's another box, School Name; click on the Search button next to it. A new School box will appear with a pull-down menu; choose UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE and click on the nearby Continue button.

  • You should now see a page offering you WileyPLUS eCommerce to accompany Big Java 3e and Java Concepts 5e for $51.95. If you do, and you have your credit card ready, click on CHECKOUT NOW and complete the billing and shipping information. When you are done, you will be shown a registration code: copy it down; you'll need it to get access to the text.

• Now, Go to the WileyPlus ICS 21 home page.

• Click on the Register link.

• After reading through the license agreement, click on Accept.

• On the next page, enter your email address.

• You will next be asked to create your profile; enter (at least) the required information and click the Submit button.

• You will next receive a confirmation message stating that your account has been successfully created and that an email has been sent to you. Click on the Continue button.

• You will now be prompted to enter your registration code; enter it and click on submit. Upon successfully entering your registration code you will be brought to the ICS 21 home page

• To read the text, click on the Read, Study & Practice link. Links to the text's chapters will appear. Follow them and subsequent links to read the book.

To read the text in the future, go back to the WileyPlus ICS 21 screen and enter your email address and password; you’ll be taken to the course home page.

You can print out pages of the book by using your browser’s print command.

See the Course Schedule for the Horstmann readings that correspond to each lecture.

ICS21 Lab Manual, Fall 2009 (“the Lab Manual”) by Jacobson and other ICS faculty. This document contains lab policies and procedures, details about the lab assignments, pair programming, taking and scoring of lab exams, and instructions on evaluating your pair programming partner.

Additional materials are available to give you more information, extra practice, or a different perspective on ICS 21 topics. Some are available on line, some in the Reserve Room of the Science Library, available for two-hour loan. Be aware that copyright law and, in the case of software, license agreements apply to these materials.

We will use several software packages for lab exercises, including Eclipse for our Java environment, Sun's Java 6 Runtime Environment to run Java code, SecureCRT for you to access your UCInetID account, a web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Firefox) for Internet browsing. You may also find the tools within Microsoft Office useful. All these packages (and others) are available for your use on the machines in the ICS labs. If you want to obtain any of this software for use on your own machine, please ask the instructor for details. In brief, Office and SecureCRT must be licensed (for a fee), and Eclipse, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Sun’s Java are free.

You will also need a way to back up (make a copy) of your work. You can use a USB memory stick or portable external hard drive, available in several capacities from many sources, including the UCI Computer store. You can also use diskettes, though they are getting harder to find and not all of our computers accept them. And you can store files to the so-called “H drive” of your ICS account; details of using the H drive are in the Orientation to the Lab section of the ICS 21 Lab Manual.

Lab assignments: The Lab Manual contains them (0% of the course grade!)

The lab assignments have you design, implement (in Java) and test computer programs. Perhaps surprisingly, they are not graded—but you are well advised to do them, as each prepares you for a corresponding lab exam.

You will work with one partner for the first three assignments, and a different partner for the last two. For each of these two pairings, we expect students to choose their partners. If you prefer not to choose your own partner, or cannot find a partner, let a TA know; she or he will find a partner for you. You or your partner must email the names of your team members to 21-questions@ics.uci.edu no later than the dates given in the Course Schedule.

Programming assignments always take longer to complete than you think they will. (This phenomenon occurs among professional computer scientists, not just students of computing.) If you start each assignment no later than suggested, spend significant time in the Help Center completing assignments with your partner—working diligently and asking questions while there—and spend time as needed outside the Help Center's hours with your partner thinking through and working on your assignments, you will be ready to take the lab exams. Students who do not follow this advice typically have a much harder time passing the lab exams.

Lab exams: Five tests you take in the lab exam section to demonstrate programming competence (a minimum performance requirement)

You take each of the lab exams at the Help Center, on the days indicated in the Course Schedule.

Each lab exam is scored as “not taken,” “not passing” or “passing”.

You must pass every lab exam to obtain a grade of C or better in the course. If you fail to pass a lab exam, you can take that test again (and again and again and...) at a scheduled “retake session,” until you pass it, up through the last one offered, which will be during Finals Week. The place and times when retake sessions will be offered will be posted on the main ICS 21 web page by the time the first lab exam is given.

Much more detail about the lab exams and their grading is in the Lab Manual.

One midterm: (40 points, 40% of the base course grade)

One final exam: (60 points, 60% of the base course grade)

To help you study for the miderm and final, we have a sample exam for each on the course website; links to them are on the ICS 21 web page. TAs and the instructor will happily discuss the questions (and their answers) with you after you have come up with your own answers. Most, but perhaps not all, of the topics covered by the questions in a sample exam will appear in the respective actual exam.

You will need to bring to the midterm and final exams a Scantron answer sheet, Form No. 882-E or 2052 or equivalent (that is, a mark-sense form that is one-half of a regular sheet of paper cut lengthwise that has 50 questions on the front, with five possible responses for each question). Form 882-E is available at the UCI bookstore and the Engineering Copy Center, among other locales.

I keep your midterm and final exam answer sheets, so that you can review them for any errors you think may be present, for about a year after the course is over, and typically recycle them after that time.

During the quarter, your grades will be posted on UCI's Electronic Educational Environment (EEE) web site. (If you have not previously used EEE to look up your grades, it’s quite straight-forward. Just go to EEE, sign in to MyEEE, and follow the instructions for viewing course grades.)

If you think a lab exam was scored incorrectly, send mail to 21-questions@ics.uci.edu explaining the situation; we’ll look into it and fix an error we find. If that does not resolve the issue, see the instructor. If you have a question about the grading of your midterm or final, contact the instructor directly.

Determining the final course grades requires several steps:

We first determine your weighted point total for the midterm and final exams.

Then we assign provisional course grades using the following scale, though the cutoffs may be, and often have been, lower: Grades in the A range (A–, A, A+), 80% and above; grades in the B range, 70%–79%; grades in the C range, 60%–69%; grades in the D range, 50%–59%; and F grades below that. A+ grades are reserved for the top scoring student or two, and are awarded only if those scores are significantly higher than the next highest scores.

This is not a curve. If it were, the cut points would be based on the distribution of scores in the class, rather than fixed cut points. Using an established point scale means that you are not graded in direct competition with your classmates.

For each of the two evaluations of your programmming partner (see the Lab Manual for details), we add 1 or 2 points to your total points. You earn 1 point for a cursory evaluation; you will earn 2 for an evaluation that is particularly thorough or insightful (and 0 points if you turn it in late or not at all). So you can earn from 0 to 4 additional points, which are added to your point total, thus perhaps raising your provisional course grade.

We may remove up to 4 points from your total (up to two points for each of the two pairs of which you are a part) if you did not fully participate in pair programming as described in course documents and the relevant documents they reference.

Then we determine how many exams you passed:

Please note two particularly important consequences of the course grading algorithm:

• If you fail to pass just one lab exam, your grade in this course will be no higher than a C- —and the more exams you do not pass, the lower your grade in the course.

• You can pass all the lab exams and still not get at least a C in the course. Remember, your letter grade is primarily based on your midterm and final exam scores; if those are low, your grade will be low.

We will post lab exams scores to the eee grade sheet as soon after grading an exam as is feasible.

Final course grades, the scores used to compute them, a number of statistics about the class and and discussion of how grades were computed will be available on the course Web page soon after the course is over. Follow the links to Course Grades and A Note on Course Grades to access that information.

As ICS21 students, you are expected to know and follow UCI and Bren School academic honesty policies; do read them. The ICS policy can be found (among other places) on the ICS undergraduate web site; the UCI policy is on the UCI Academic Senate site.

In addition to those rules, there are some specific rules regarding student-with-student cooperation in this class:

You may cooperate on the assignments to any degree you wish, including, of course, asking questions of your partner and course staff.

While taking exams, you must do your own work. Among other things, this means you cannot memorize someone else's code —particularly mine or a TA's—and just repeat it on the exam. The tests are closed book (and closed neighbor!), except that for the midterm and final you can use a dictionary and a non-programmable calculator. Lab and retake exams must be taken at the times and in the rooms in which they are scheduled. A violation of these rules will be considered cheating, and dealt with accordingly.

• Read the mian course web page, the Course Reference, the Course Schedule, and Enrollment web pages, and the Web documents ithey reference.

• Obtain a memory stick or diskettes, or access other means (e.g., your H drive) to back up your work.

• Get a print copy of the textbook, or sign up for the on-line version.

• Get a print card (if you plan to use lab printers).

• Activate your UCInetID.

• Activate your ICS account.

• Find a pair programming partner.

• As needed, learn about email, our lab set-up, Eclipse, and the other topicss described in the Orientation to the Lab section of the Lab Manual.

• Read in the Lab Manual about Lab 1 and begin working on it; begin preparing for Lab Exam #1, including by reading in the Lab Manual about how to form a pair programming team and about how lab exams are conducted.