ICS 211 Fall 2003   

Syllabus 

For questions or comments please e-mail the instructor at blanca@hawaii.edu


Course Name: ICS211 Introduction to Computer Science II, Data Structures in JAVA.  

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CONTACT INFORMATION

Contacting the Instructor

Office Address

1680 East-West Rd. POST 314-D, Honolulu HI, 96822

Office numbers

Phone: 956-3887

E-mail address

blanca@hawaii.edu

Availability

 Office Hours
  • Tuesday and Thursday from 10:30 to 11:30 am.
  • If a special appointment is needed please e-mail the instructor at least 24 hours in advance.

E-mail

  • I will check e-mail at least once a day  from Monday to Friday.
  • I do not read e-mail during weekends (From Friday at 5:00pm until Monday at 10:00 am).

Phone Calls

  • You may call to 956-3887, however E-mail is the best way to get a hold of the instructor.

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ICS 211 COURSE DESCRIPTION

 This course will introduce students to data structures. We will design and write programs that are more entertaining, fun and also more complicated than those in ICS 111.

Here are some  about this course:  

* What will you cover in this course?

We will learn how to build different kind of data structures using JAVA. We will learn previously made structures and we will learn how to create our custom-made data structures. We will learn/review applets and how to use JAVA in the UNIX environment. 

* What won't be covered?

JAVA Basics, the student is must have taken an introductory course in JAVA. During the lab lectures the TAs will give the students exercises to familiarize them with JAVA in UNIX. 

* Why is it worthwhile to study this subject? 

JAVA is the language of the Internet. The Internet keeps on growing and Java is becoming more important every day. As a programmer, if you are proficient with JAVA, you are more likely to find a good paying job. -$$$$-

* What is the approach to teaching this content?

We will learn all our material from a practical point of view. Some theory will be necessary, but the main idea will be to implement the concepts learned in a way that we can see how they apply to the real world. If time permits we will have one or two team projects.

* How will this relate to the material that was covered in the prerequisite course(s)? 

Since JAVA basics won't be covered, we will only summarize the concepts that the student should already know. It is up to the student to learn any concepts that he/she didn't learn in ICS111. 

* Is there any other body of content that it will draw on? 

A good understanding of Algebra will be helpful in this course, even when it is not a prerequisite. In UH terms, if you have taken Math27, it will be helpful. If you have gone beyond that, it will be even better. ICS141 and ICS241 are also very helpful but not necessary. ICS111 and knowledge of JAVA basics is a must.

* What will be expected of you, the student? 
-- Aside from the class time the student will need to dedicate from 5 to 10 hours per week to this class. The reason for this, is that assignments will be given and due about every 8 to 10 days all throughout the course.
-- In order to get the most out of this course, the student should be able to build JAVA classes and use JAVA libraries. 
-- The student should be able to program stand-alone applications. 
-- The student should have the basic concepts of HTML so he/she can build a web page and post applets. We will review/learn about applets in this course.

* What about the labs?

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COURSE GOALS

By the end of the Fall of 2003 you will:

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     NO TEXT BOOK is required. The student should rely on his/her notes. Attendance is therefore very important. The instructor will not be responsible for posting notes on the web.

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COURSE SCHEDULE

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 ASSIGNMENT POLICIES

How to submit your assignments:  

Your assignments should be submitted by e-mail to the following address:

ics211-homework@hawaii.edu

Your homework must be attached to the e-mail. If you are submitting a JAVA program, you MUST make sure that it compiles and runs properly in UNIX. Failure to do so may result in point deduction. If your program runs in JBuilder, Visual Cafe or J++, that is no guarantee that it will run in uhunix2, so I you should upload and test your program before you turn it in. Programs will be graded using UHUNIX2.

Assignment due dates:  

Deadlines for each assignment will be given in day and time. As an example:  If your homework is due on Monday January the 1st of 2000 at 8:00 A.M. your program must have been received by that time in the above e-mail address. The time considered here is the uhunix2 time (not your personal computer's time, not the Greenwich time but uhunix2 time). Take into consideration that the time you send an e-mail and the time the e-mail is received may vary by seconds, perhaps minutes. The time taken into consideration here is the time at which we receive the e-mail. That will constitute our timestamp. Make sure that you allow enough time for the e-mail to be received before the deadline.

How will you know if we got your homework?  But most important, at what time did we get it?

For this you will do the following:
After sending your homework, you should use your browser to go to http://www2.hawaii.edu/~tp_200/bmf/ics211-homework.html so you can verify if your homework is there. I recommend you book mark this site. PLEASE allow 5 minutes or so for the page to update itself. Use the "Refresh" button in your browser to update your page. 

What if you can't see your homework?

You may resend your homework. However the only homework that will be taken into consideration for grading will be the last one. So be careful because if you resend your homework a few minutes past the deadline because you didn't trust the web reload button the latest version is the one that will count and you will get points deducted for late work. So please take your time and try to send your homework at least one hour prior to the deadline.

How many points will a lose for late assignments?

Each homework is worth 100 points. Each day late will be 20 points deduction. After five days there is no point in turning in your homework  because you won't be awarded any points. Since it is "unfair" to take 20 points off if you are late 1 second I have the following policy for the first day: In the first 23 hours and 59 seconds after the deadline, you will lose 0.83 points every hour. So if you are one hour late late (or one minute late) your homework is still worth 99.17 points, and if you are 60.00001 minutes late your homework will be worth 98.34, etc....At 23.9999 hours past the deadline your assignment has a maximum value of 80 points.  Once you pass the first 24 hours your deduction will be 20 points per day, on other words: 24.000001 hours late is the same as 2 days late, and the assignment is worth 60% at this point. To figure out your maximum possible grade just do your math and count your time.

Once the grades have been posted by your TA you will have one week from the date of the posting to talk to your TA in case that you are not satisfied with the grade you received.

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GRADING

The following is the weight distribution for each one of the activities for ICS 211.

Quizzes

10 %

Homework

40 %

In-class participation

5 %

Midterm 1

10  %

Midterm 2

15 %

Final

20 %

 

I DO NOT  grade on a curve.  The grades will be awarded as follows:

90 to 100

A

80 to 89

B

70 to 79

C

55 to 70

D

0 to 54

F

There are gaps in between the letter grades. If a person gets 89.5, what grade should he/she receive? That is up to the instructor and it will be based on attendance and in-class performance.

Discrepancy clause: If there is a big discrepancy (namely 20 points difference) between the grades obtained in the homework Vs. the grades obtained in the exams, the lowest grade of them both will be the one taken into consideration as the grade for both exams and homework.

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