Although students using different types of computer operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, Chrome) have completed this lecture section in the past, this section is Windows specific. In years past there was a Mac specific lecture offered but this is no longer the case for this department. I'm wasn't part of the decision making process so I unfortunately I can't speculate why this was the case. You might check on PeopleSoft for courses that are listed as anti-requisites for CPSC 203 and check out their course content. If you don't find anything there then check with the Faculty of Continuing Education for their current offerings. You may be able to get through the course if you are not a windows user however because this is a Windows lecture section if you run into problems related to another operating system we won't have access to those resources so unfortunately it's not likely that we will be able to assist you.
However here is an alternative for students who don't have MS-Office on a Windows computer:
- You can use the campus computers (the computer labs on the first floor of Math Sciences are the recommended ones because their build should be compatible, you can use other computers on campus but avoid using the library computers because students have indicated that many important features of office are disabled).
- [Running Office using a remote connection to a Windows 10 TriLab computer]
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Day/Time |
Lecture TR (4:00 - 5:15 PM) in ENA 101 . |
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James Tam |
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Office time:
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Email: tam@ucalgary.ca |
| Official information |
Official course information sheet (summary of
official course requirements, due to a bug in the faculty of science
website the office hours are wrong).
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| General assignment information |
Grade calculator to estimate your term grade:
[Excel spreadsheet] Academic misconduct vs. collaboration: what is allowed for this class All assignments except for the last will be graded by your tutorial instructor. The first person to contact with questions about marking will be that person. |
| Books (available via the UC bookstore) |
Textbook (explanation of some course material):
[Bookstore
textbook ordering link]
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| How this course compares to some other first year courses. | CPSC 203 includes an applications component(s) which involves using pre-written programs whereas the other courses (CPSC 217, 231) all focus on how to write a computer program. Consequently those latter two courses include additional programming topics not included in this class and typical students find these courses more challenging. [Link to a topic-by-topic comparison of the three courses] |
| For more information | Grading information, how the course will be run etc. |
Teaching tutorials (commence the week of Jan. 16 - 22) and will be available via a Zoom link (look under "Content->Teaching tutorials" in D2L and under the appropriate week for the tutorial you will find a separate folder for each tutorial)
- Tutorials are a mandatory component of the courses. Time will be spent on the following: TA's teaching new skills, discussion of assignment requirements and if possible some question and answer time.
Tutorial
Location Date/Time
Instructor
Contact information: if you have questions it's best to reach the TA during the CT time but you can email them for relative short and simple questions. T01 MS119 TuTh 8:00AM - 8:50AM Farzana Aktar farzana.aktar@ucalgary.ca T02 MS119 MoWe 8:00AM - 8:50AM Farzana Aktar farzana.aktar@ucalgary.ca T03 MS119 TuTh 9:00AM - 9:50AM Sharmila Jakkala sharmila.jakkala@ucalgary.ca T04 MS119 TuTh 12:00PM - 12:50PM Sharmila Jakkala sharmila.jakkala@ucalgary.ca T05: MS119 TuTh 1:00PM - 1:50PM Zhang Xinchi (April) xinchi.zhang@ucalgary.ca T06: MS119 TuTh 3:00PM - 3:50PM Zhang Xinchi (April) xinchi.zhang@ucalgary.ca If you don't know which tutorial you are registered in then you can find it in the "Student Center" when you login to [PeopleSoft]
Shortcut links for each week of tutorial
- #Tutorial_week_1
- #Tutorial_week_2
- #Tutorial_week_3
- #Tutorial_week_4
- #Tutorial_week_5
- #Tutorial_week_6
- #Tutorial_week_7
- #Tutorial_week_8
- #Tutorial_week_9
- #Tutorial_week_10
- #Tutorial_week_11
- #Tutorial_week_12
Tutorial schedule Topics covered Students to-do: before Word tutorials Assumed knowledge of Word (it would be a good idea to at least skim through those notes even though you are familiar with this program). [PDF] [PowerPoint] Tutorial week 1: Jan. 15 - 21
- Exercise: Assignment #0 (students can try out the process of submitting files into and learning how to properly verify their submission with a TA available for help).
- Go over requirements: Workbook Exercise #1
- Go over requirements: Assignment #1
- MS-Word: 'Save' vs. "Save as", tagging Office files, creating PDF versions of documents, approaches for mitigating disaster in Word, converting between different versions of Word, formatting text, show/hide formatting symbols, insertions (images, page breaks, cover pages, section breaks, symbols & equations). [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint]
Tutorial week 2: Jan. 22 - 28
- MS-Word: operations with tables (basics will be assumed), table formulas, document headers/footers, text styles, using the format painter, finding text, document views, master-subdocuments, linking Word documents with other types of files (e.g. Excel spreadsheets). [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Starting Word documents]
Tutorial week 3: Jan. 29 - Feb. 4
- MS-Word: Student exercise (master-subdocuments), mail merge without using the Wizard, creating a table of contents, creating & using citations, figure captions, footnotes & endnotes, tracking changes in Word. [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Starting Word documents]
- Teaching assistant goes over the requirements of Workbook Exercise #2
Students to-do: before Excel tutorials
- Assumed student knowledge of Excel (i.e. not covered in class): [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint]
Tutorial week 4: Feb. 5 - 11 First tutorial
- Going over the requirements: Assignment #2
Second tutorial
- MS-Excel: common math operators, order of operation, merging cells, wrapping cell data, indenting, defining custom formulas, data validation (string/character information) [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Starting Excel spreadsheets]
Tutorial week 5: Feb. 12 - 18 Resources for the week: [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Starting Excel spreadsheets]
First tutorial
- MS-Excel: working multiple worksheets, named constants, simple pre-created or pre-written functions: AVERAGE, TRUNC, COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTBLANK, MIN, MAX, SUM, ROUND, TODAY, DATE, Format cells and different types of data (Number, currency, accounting, percentage, fraction, scientific, text, special, custom), conditional formatting.
Second tutorial
- MS-Excel: working multiple worksheets, named constants, simple pre-created or pre-written functions: AVERAGE, TRUNC, COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTBLANK, MIN, MAX, SUM, ROUND, TODAY, DATE, Format cells and different types of data (Number, currency, accounting, percentage, fraction, scientific, text, special, custom), conditional formatting.
No tutorials, Feb. 19 - 25 (Reading Week: no classes)
Tutorial week 6: Feb. 26 - Mar. 4 First tutorial
- Branching (via the IF function) and logic (AND, OR functions), cell references (more advanced examples, transposing their use). Web searches using logic: AND, OR, NOT. [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Starting Excel spreadsheets]
Second tutorial
- Recording a VBA Word macro, displaying output using a MsgBox, declaring variables to store information, getting user typed input using an InputBox: [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [VBA example programs] [Exercises]
- Going over the requirements of [Workbook Exercise #3]
Tutorial week 7: Mar. 5 - 11 First tutorial (Workbook exercise #4)
- Go over requirements: [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint]
- Link to the assignment description: Workbook Exercise #4
Second tutorial
- Accessing the number of typographical errors in a document, changing font properties, writing text to a document, finding things in a document (text strings, font effects, formatting styles in Word). [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [VBA example programs] [Exercises]
Tutorial week 8: Mar. 12 - 18 First tutorial:
- Going over requirements: Assignment #3
Second tutorial:
- Branching using the IF-structures: IF-THEN, IF-THEN-ELSE, IF-ELSEIF, Multiple IFs, logical operators (AND, OR) in conjunction with branching. [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [VBA example programs] [Exercises]
Tutorial week 9: Mar. 19 - 25 First tutorial: Open tutorial
- No new teaching will occur but the TA will be available for help. During this "Open Tutorial" any CPSC 203 student can ask for help and not just the students who are registered in a particular tutorial. The purpose is to provide extra help because the next workbook exercise is the first one in which you need to write a program from scratch.
Second tutorial:
- Nesting: IF with IF, Do-While within an IF, If within a Do-While
- [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [VBA example programs] [Exercises]
- Collaboration vs. misconduct: what's allowed and not allowed. (Based on this [resource link])
Tutorial week 10: Mar. 26 - Apr. 1 First tutorial:
- Branching & loops applied to VBA collections, benefit of including an Option Explicit instruction, using the VBA debugger.
- [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [VBA example programs] [Exercises]
- Going over the requirements: Workbook Exercise #5 (Excel VBA programming)
Second tutorial: Open tutorial
- No new teaching will occur but the TA will be available for help. During this "Open Tutorial" any CPSC 203 student can ask for help and not just the students who are registered in a particular tutorial. The purpose is to provide extra help because the next workbook exercise is the first one in which you need to write a program from scratch.
Tutorial week 11: Apr. 2 - 8 [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [VBA example programs] [Exercises] First tutorial:
- Going over the requirements: Assignment 4 (Excel VBA programming)
- Excel VBA programming: formatting cells, accessing and changing cells, inserting charts & changing chart properties.
Second tutorial:
- Excel VBA programming: formatting cells, accessing and changing cells, inserting charts & changing chart properties.
Tutorial week 12: April 9 - 15 (last day of class and CT is Apr. 12) Tutorials for the week: [all sections] will be open tutorials where any student can go for help.
- No new teaching will occur but the TA will be available for help. During this "Open Tutorial" any CPSC 203 student can ask for help and not just the students who are registered in a particular tutorial.
Help tutorials = Continuous tutorials (or CT for short) where you can go for help outside of class in addition to my office time. The number of hours vary according to the anticipated demand so check the schedule below for specifics.
- These sessions will typically be staffed by the tutorial instructors but they are not mandatory for students and are provided so that you can get help
- You are NOT restricted getting help from the CT session staffed by the person whose tutorial you are registered in (you can go to any TA for help).
- If you have questions then it's best to ask them during the CT unless it's a question that can be answered fairly quickly via email
- Continuous tutorial schedule (commencement week TBA):
[CPSC 203 CT schedule]
- CT and open tutorial during Good Friday (April 7) and Easter Monday (April 10) will be run remotely via Zoom. [Details]
CT_and_open_tutorial_during_Good_Friday_(April_7)_and_Easter_Monday_(April_10)