Assignments
The assignments for this class are managed on eCampus. Additional informaton for assingments may be posted here. Stay tuned for specifics.
In this course there will be approximately 15 programming assignments. For each assignment students will be shown how to write Java code that solves a well-defined and interesting problem using a programing topic that is the learning objective for that assignment. Students will be responsible for modifying and extending the code to solve a similar problem that interests them. Examples will be provided. Later assignments will have a bigger weighting for the overall grade.
This is a Studio course and some assignment code will be posted in an open forum. Grading will be based on three factors; is an individual’s code different from the code provided by the instructor, is the code different from that of all the other students, and the instructor may award bonus points for innovation, novelty, and coolness.
The assignments are an integral part of the course and students cannot learn the material without doing them. Students must turn in all coursework on E-Campus. A penalty is assessed on late assignments (30-50%). Late work is accepted until the assignment is no longer available on E-Campus, usually 2 weeks after the due date.
Projects
I will assign two projects during the semester. One at midterm and one as the final project. The projects are team based and required planning for successful implementation. These projects bring together the concepts introduced in prior weeks.
Quizzes
TThere will be up to 2 Quizzes given each week. There are three types of quizzes; gather, tacit, and Mob Coding. In addition, the lab instructor may give up to ten in class pop quizzes or assignments. These will generally be programming problems used in job interviews and will relate to the weekly topic.
• Gather Quizzes
Each week students will be tasked with finding and evaluating a freely available online tutorial that covers the week’s topic. Students will post a web link to the tutorial along with a written evaluation of the tutorial in an online course forum. Repeats are not allowed. Every student must find a unique tutorial.
• Tacit Quizzes
Each week students will be tasked with discovering for
themselves some aspect of how computers and computation are
or may effect society and culture.
The instructor will propose a weekly topic and the students will
be responsible for finding a web based recourse that explains,
discusses or demonstrates the topic. Topics will be guided by
student interest. Past examples include; human and AI
interaction, differential pricing in online marketplaces, virtual
currencies, computer generated art and music, digital image
forensics (photo faking), and special effects.
• Mob Coding Quizzes
On certain weeks, I will give an assignment to be coded as quickly as possible, in teams of four. I will explain the assignment and rules in class.