1. Syllabus Highlights CSE 1310 – Introduction to Computers and Programming Vassilis Athitsos University of Texas at Arlington 1

2. About the Course This course is aimed to be the first course in computer programming. – This course is aimed for students who have NEVER PROGRAMMED BEFORE. The topic is difficult. – It requires very precise, mathematical thinking. Unlike other courses, "getting most of the material" will not get you a good grade. – If you have even small gaps in the material, it will be very hard to do well in the class. – For a program to work, it needs to be 100% correct. – Code that is 99% correct is 0% useful. 2

3. Time Expectations Expected: 10 hours per week outside of class. Weekly programming assignments, that will be time consuming. This is a class where: – Falling behind is easy. – Catching up is hard. Attention to detail will be crucial. – Code that is 99% correct is 0% useful. (yes, you will be hearing this a lot in this class). 3

4. Grading (1) A letter grade will be computed for your average homework score. A letter grade will be computed for your average exam score. The smallest of those two grades will be your semester grade. 4

5. Grading (2) So, if you ace the exams but do no homeworks, you will fail. If you ace the homeworks but fail the exams, you will fail. I fully expect some people will be shocked at the end of the semester, when they fail the class due to this policy. Still, there is nothing I can do about that. – The grading policy is on the syllabus. – You are responsible for reading and understanding the syllabus. – Complaining in December will be useless. 5

6. Grading (3) No homework scores will be dropped. No exam scores will be dropped. Grading is based on performance. Grading criteria do not include: – Effort. – Class participation. – What grade you need to qualify for financial aid, for a job, for graduation, etc. All requests for leniency in grading will be ignored. 6

7. Re-grading Policy Any request for re-grading (for an assignment or midterm exam) must be made within 5 days of receipt of that grade. Any request for re-grading the final exam must be made within 3 days of receipt of that grade. Re-grading can lead to a higher or lower grade, depending on grading errors that are discovered. Usually, around final exams time (when people try to get extra points, to make the threshold for a better grade) students ask us to regrade exams and assignments from two or three months ago. – At that point they get shocked to hear about the re-grading policy. 7

8. Assignments You must submit on Blackboard. Late penalty: 4 points per hour. – No exceptions, except for medical/personal emergencies documented in writing. – Network/computer crashes will not be accepted as an excuse. Every semester, some people get 0 in an assignment (or more), because they submitted the wrong file on Blackboard. – Then they ask for leniency, because they did all the work, and just made a silly mistake in submitting. – Sorry, there will be no leniency on this issue. – Verify your submission every time. 8

9. Exams Most questions will ask you to write code. Some questions will ask you to read code and: – Predict what the code will do. – Fix mistakes. Exams are open book. – You can use books, notes, and any other handwritten or printed material. No electronic devices are allowed: – No calculators, cell phones, laptops, e-books. 9

10. Class Participation Class participation is not part of the grading criteria. However: asking questions, and trying to answer questions, can help you in understanding the material. – If you have questions and you do not ask in class, where are you going to get the answers? If you do not understand something, always feel free to raise your hand and ask a question. 10

11. Course Website The course website is here: http://vlm1.uta.edu/~athitsos/courses/cse1310_spring2016/ http://vlm1.uta.edu/~athitsos/courses/cse1310_spring2016/ The course schedule, lecture slides, and code we write in class, will be available on the "Lectures" link. Assignments will be available on the "Assignments" link. The exam schedule and information about each exam will be available on the "Exams" link. 11

12. Syllabus The syllabus is posted here: http://vlm1.uta.edu/~athitsos/courses/cse1310_fall2015/syllabus/ http://vlm1.uta.edu/~athitsos/courses/cse1310_fall2015/syllabus/ You are responsible for reading and understanding what the syllabus says. At the end of the semester, when grades are posted, it is common to get complaints from students, saying that they were not aware of various aspects of the syllabus, that severely hurt their grade. – My only response will be to point them to this slide. 12

13. Getting Help There are two teaching assistants for this course. In total, there are seven teaching assistants for all sections of 1310. The teaching assistants will have lab hours, at ERB 124. The lab schedule is posted on the course website. Feel free to go to the lab during posted lab hours, and ask ANY teaching assistant for help with the course material. There will be several lab hours every weekday. 13

14. Getting Help If you send us an e-mail, send it to ALL OF US (myself and the TAs), to maximize chances of getting a reply fast. For many questions regarding installation of software, and bugs with your code, we will just ask you to go see a TA during lab hours. Do not expect responses to frantic queries in the last minutes before an assignment is due. – Little sympathy will be offered for people who leave assignments for the last minute. 14

15. Getting Help – StartStrong Program This is only available for first-year students. All first time, first-year students can receive six FREE hours of tutoring for this course and other selected subjects for this semester. Students must sign up and complete their first hour of tutoring by February 12th. To sign up, visit UTSI in 205 Ransom Hall/University College. Flexible tutoring hours are available from 7:00am - 9:00pm, seven days a week in the Central Library. Find out more at www.uta.edu/startstrongwww.uta.edu/startstrong 15

16. Attendance Attending exams is mandatory. – Again, exceptions are made only for medical/personal emergencies documented in writing. – Transportation problems, malfunctioning alarms, not accepted as an excuse. You do not have to attend lectures. However, if you do not attend lectures, you are still responsible for understanding the material. – Do not expect a private lecture during office hours or by e- mail. 16

17. Attendance I need to report to UTA: – If a student has attended the class at all. – When a student has stopped attending. Because of that, we will be taking attendance every day till census date. I don’t know what UTA does with the attendance data. For the purposes of grading, attendance in lectures does not matter. 17