Administrative information for CPSC 231

Course information sheet

• Acrobat version

Course textbooks (recommended only)

Assignments (30% of the term grade)

For this portion of the course you will create small to moderately large computer programs. You will be given a description of the features of the program and you will have (approximately) several weeks to fulfill those requirements. This will be one of the more intensive sections of the course but it will be one of the things that will help prepare you for the examinations.

Tutorial exercises (7% of the term grade)

This portion of the course will involve writing computer programs that are substantially smaller than the assignments. There will be a maximum of 10 tutorial exercises starting the week of September 20 (second week of the term). You will be given the description for the exercise on Friday a week before it's due and you have until the second tutorial (in the same corresponding week) to demonstrate to your TA that you have a working program. For example, with the first tutorial exercise due the week of Friday September 24 you will get the tutorial exercise by Friday September 17. Each assignment will be graded on a pass (1 mark)/ fail (0 marks) basis. The marks for the tutorial exercises will be summed up at the end of the term and converted to the following letter grades:

Note: if there is insufficient time in the second tutorial to demo your exercise to your TA by the end of the second tutorial then the absolute cutoff will be the last CT (Continuous lab tutorial that week - you can demo to any 231 TA who will then pass your grade along to your TA).

In-class lecture exercises (3% of the term grade)

You will be using the CPS 'clicker' remote control units for this portion of the class. Sometime during lecture I will be conducting these in class exercises which are unannounced beforehand. The questions will be in multiple choice format and you will use the CPS remote to enter your response. You will need to purchase the remote from the university bookstore ahead of time and register it via Blackboard (CPSC 231 L02: Fall 2010). Although you won't know when you will receive an exercise in class I will let you know ahead of time from which point onwards in the term that grading will commence. For each lecture exercise you can receive a maximum of two marks: 1 mark for giving responding with your CPS remote (i.e., for being in class and awake enough to select an option) and 1 mark for actually selecting the correct answer. Your marks will be totaled and the percentage out of the maximum marks will be converted to a letter grade using the following scales:

Help on registering your remote in Blackboard:

Don't use the CPS website (EInstruction) to register because I won't be using it this term. To find the appropriate link in Blackboard you should first look for this course and lecture in Blackboard. Next select the 'tools' option in the menu on the left hand side.

You'll see a number of options at this point, just scroll down and select the last one "CPS connection".

Then click on the link "My CPS Page", don't press "OK" or you will just return back to the list of tools.

You will then get somewhat of scary looking dialog come up. You will sometimes get this message in Blackboard if you go to external links (e.g., the course web page). Normally if you are working with confidential information (e.g., credit cards, banking, tax) you don't want information to be sent in a fashion that is not secure. In this case, with Blackboard you have to select "no" otherwise the link won't work. However the information that you to enter at this point is mostly for CPS so you probably should be okay unless for some odd reason you decide to enter confidential information (you shouldn't be prompted to do so by the program).

This should bring you to a screen that shows you the courses that you have been enrolled in via Blackboard. For additional details or to cover the difference scenarios not covered here, here's a link made by the company distributing the CPS remotes. When you go to that link you should probably start at step #5, I would have just used their help file instead of writing up the above steps but they were little hazy on exactly how you find the CPS registration link within Blackboard. [Adobe Acrobat file on the EInstruction website].

Midterm (25% of the term grade)

The midterm exam will be common to all three CPSC 231 lectures for the fall 2010 semester. (Common Midterm Thursday October 28^th, 2010 in ST 148 at 18:00) The exam will be closed book.

Final exam (35% of the term grade)

It will be scheduled by the office of the Registrar. Information about the time/date will be released by them (and not the course instructor) sometime during the semester. It will be a common exam that is also closed book.