ICS 65: Programming in C++ as a Second Language
Fall 2012
Course Reference
Instructor information
Contacting me: I tend to be much easier to reach via email than any other way, so I would suggest using email to contact me under normal circumstances. When you write me an email, please take a few moments to make sure that the following information is placed somewhere in your message: your name, your student ID#, and which course you're enrolled in (important since I'm teaching more than one this quarter).
Teaching assistants
We have one teaching assistant this quarter, Duy Lai (laid AT uci DOT edu), who will be supervising the project grading and also will have some student contact hours scheduled, despite the fact that there are no discussions or labs officially scheduled for the course; more information on those will follow soon.
Times and places
Lecture
A lecture meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:30-4:50pm in ICS 174. Given the course's size, attendance is not graded, but we certainly recommend it. (Naturally, attendance is required on the days when exams are held, which are listed in the Schedule.)
TA hours
Duy, our TA, will be available in ICS 189 at these times, during which you are free to stop by and ask about projects, lecture material, or whatever is on your mind.
Office hours
I will be available on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:15-8:45pm in ICS 253 — not my office, as it's in a building that will be locked during at least part of that time — during which I'm available to chat with you about whatever's on your mind. (Note that this block of time is listed as an ICS 22 / CSE 22 discussion in the UCI Schedule of Classes, but it is actually my office hours, so you do not have to feel obligated to enroll in the discussion, nor to attend it, and you do not have to be enrolled in order to attend.)
Textbooks
There is an optional textbook for the course, listed below.
There are at least a couple of ways to get the textbook: purchasing a hard copy from online booksellers such as Amazon, or renting an electronic edition from CourseSmart, with the CourseSmart option being significantly cheaper but only allowing you to view the text for six months.
Note that while I will be assigning readings from this textbook that correspond to our lectures, the goal is to complement the lecture material and help you fill in details that you missed while listening to me speak for eighty minutes. I will not be testing you on details from the textbook that were not discussed in lecture or covered on projects. If you find that you'd prefer to work without a textbook, or even work with a different book (or online supplements of your own choosing), that's fine; the overall goal is to learn C++, and I'm not especially finicky about how you do it.
Obtaining additional assistance
Asking questions of course staff
You can most easily get course questions answered by coming to the lecture, TA hours, or office hours and asking them. I am happy to help you in person when I'm available. You can also ask questions by sending email to me or your TA (or both); we check our email frequently throughout the day, so you can usually get an answer to course-related questions within a few hours (and often much more quickly). If the questions require a complex or lengthy response, we may ask you to see one of us in person. As projects approach their due date, particularly on days when projects are due, we begin to receive quite a bit of email all at once, so we may not be able to respond to all messages before the project is due. We aren't ignoring you on purpose, but unfortunately it's not always possible for the relatively small course staff to answer questions from a large number of students at once.
Accommodations for disabilities
Any students who feel that they may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss these specific needs. Also, contact the Disability Services Center online or by phone at (949) 824-7494 as soon as possible to better ensure that such accommodations, such as alternative test-taking environments or note-taking services, can be arranged for you in a timely way.
Grading
Weights of graded artifacts
Your course grade will be determined from the weighted combination of your scores on each of six programming projects, one Midterm, and one Final Exam. The weights of each of these are:
Determining final grades
Course grades will be determined neither on a normal curve nor a straight scale. It is guaranteed that overall scores over 90% will receive an A- or better, scores over 80% will receive a B- or better, and scores over 70% will receive a C or better. However, the actual cutoffs may be lowered at the end of the quarter. In short, it is not my intention to fail half of the students, nor am I planning on giving only 2% of the students A's, but I prefer not to constrain myself with either a straight scale or a formalized curve.
If you're curious about how you're doing in the course, I'm happy to discuss your estimated grade at any time. It's generally best to have this conversation in person, so that we can explore issues other than just the raw numbers; I'm happy to have this conversation at any time that I'm available, and I'm also glad to do it via email if we can't find a mutually available time.
Dropping the course or changing grade option
Through the end of Week 2 (Friday, October 12), you may drop the course by simply going to WebReg and dropping it. If you wish to drop the course after that date, you will need to use the Enrollment Exceptions system to request a drop; I do not have the final say over those, ultimately, as the Dean of the Bren School (and your major, if you are majoring in something outside of the Bren School) must approve them. It is not generally the case that an exception will be accepted simply because you're not doing well in a course, though extenuating circumstances are certainly considered.
Similarly, changing your grade option (to Pass/NotPass or back again) can be done via WebReg through the end of Week 2 (Friday, October 12), after which you must use the Enrollment Exceptions system to request the change. As with exceptional drops, you must receive approval from the appropriate Deans.
Academic honesty
The policy
As ICS 65 students, you are expected to know and follow the academic honesty policies of both the Bren School of ICS 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. Worker in larger groups and/or sharing of code between students that are not partners 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 work.
Academic honesty 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.
Naturally, the Midterm and Final Exam are also expected to be individual efforts. Dishonest behavior during an exam will not be tolerated.
Violators of academic honesty policies are subject to the penalties described in the Bren School of ICS 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 computing majors, registering for computing minors, joining the ICS Honors Program, and graduating from a computing major with honors.
The lesson
Okay, so the moral of the story is that it's wise to avoid cheating. I believe that it's relatively rare that students enter a course with the conscious intent to cheat their way through it; why come to UCI if you're not planning to get something out of the coursework? So why do people cheat every quarter in every course? The answers vary, but here's the easiest way I can boil down the numerous conversations I've had with students caught cheating in my courses over the years: I fell behind and couldn't figure out how to catch up. Things happen and ten-week quarters are unforgiving. You might get sick, you might have issues crop up in your family, you might have an off-campus job that's demanding too much of your time, you might be trying to decide whether you're on the path you want to be on... Any of those things (and many others) can make it hard to keep up. You fall a little behind, you fall a little further behind, and pretty soon the situation seems hopeless. You're under pressure, temptation gets the better of you...
If you feel like you're beginning to slip off course or things are getting beyond your control, the best thing to do is to talk to us sooner rather than later. We're here to help; we understand. But the reality of taking large-sized courses at a large-sized institution is that we're not going to know you're in need unless you tell us. If things are happening in your life, tell us; you don't have to be specific if you're not comfortable with it. Before the fact, there's often a way to work things out. After the fact, it's usually too late.