HTW Berlin
Fachbereich 4
Internationaler Studiengang
Internationale Medieninformatik (Bachelor)
Info 1: Informatik I
Summer Term 2011
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HTW Berlin |
General Information Sheet |
This page describes some of the general information that you will need to know about Informatik 1 (sometimes called Info 1 by the administration). It also includes course policies that I will expect you to abide by during this term. You should read through this page and make sure that you understand its contents. You will probably also want to save it for future reference. This handout -- as well as other course information -- is available on the web via the course web page, http://www.f4.htw-berlin.de/~weberwu/info1/. It is generally a good idea to keep a bookmark of my home page around, as I put lots of information there.
| Contents: | Course Teachers |
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I have a collaboration room set up for the class on Moodle, a learning management system many people use. We will be experimenting with the new version of Moodle, Moodle 2. You can reach the other students in your course this way, there is a forum that reaches all members of the class (this is not identical to the people in your semester, as there are people taking this class from other semesters), a forum for questions for me, some additional material, and areas for uploading your exercises.
Please register for this Moodle room as soon as possible, so you can hand in your assignments. The secret key is "BlueJrocks".
You have to have an email address in order to register with Moodle. You were given an HTW account with your immatriculation, please use it. We use professional email addresses and not "cute" ones like gogogirl@hotmail.com or master_of_the@universe.de in communicating with each other. If you must stick with gogogirl, at least organize a professional sounding alias and mail from that, forwarding answers to your cute address.
Please put up a picture in Moodle that looks like you - we will have difficulty learning to associate your face to your name if all we see online is a picture of your dog. These pictures are not public.
Text: The textbook for this course is Objects First with Java: A Practical Introduction Using BlueJ by David Barnes and Michael Kölling. I will be using the 4th edition (published in 2009). There are versions available for older editions and in German, they may work. Use at your own risk.
Reference: There is no required reference for this course; the textbook plus a web reference such as Java's API documentation (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/) should be sufficient. However, some people prefer to have a paper reference in addition to the on-line reference.
If you prefer to have a paper copy of a Java reference, I recommend that you acquire a copy of
Java in a Nutshell by David Flanagan (O'Reilly).
Be sure that you get the most recent edition. This book is an excellent reference on Java and it is reasonably priced. It is also available from a bookstore or online.
Further Reading: If you are interested in the topics covered in this class, you may wish to read more. In particular, I recommend:
These are all superb books. However, they were not cheap when I priced them last. The last two cover more advanced material than we will in this class, and none are in any way required for Info1. During the term I may recommend other advanced books for those who wish to learn more about certain topics.
Sources: You can buy Java books (among many other places) at a technical bookshop such as Lehmann's or order them from any bookstore (this may take a day or so). You can also get them from on-line stores such as amazon.de, bol.de, or buch.de. Some publishers -- like O'Reilly-- also sell their books directly. Shop around for a good price. (If you buy it from Amazon, IMI gets a few cents kickback to pay for cookies for the showtime.... but English books are rather expensive at Amazon). I strongly suggest only getting the English version, as Java usually changes by the time they get around to getting it translated into German :-(
There is also plenty of material online about Java. If you feel the need to practice syntax, I strongly suggest using CodingBat.
Course Meetings
The class lecture meets on Tuesdays from 12.00-13.30 in C 348 and Wednesdays from 12.00-13.00 in WH C 349. I like to start on time. Please make that extra effort (perhaps getting one tram earlier) to be seated and ready to go at the beginning of class time. Excuses for being late do not amuse me.
I may have to move one or two lectures to accomodate other appointments. If so, I will announce it in advance via the Moodle announcements.
In addition to the lecture, each student is assigned to a laboratory session. Prof. Weber-Wulff will be teaching group 2 on Tuesdays 13.45-15.15 in C 576 and Tom Staubitz will be teaching group 1 on Thursdays at 13.45-15.15, also in C 576. Please stay with your groups and be on time. We give instructions the first few minutes of class and will then be checking pre-labs.
The tutorials are a chance for you to repeat material, ask questions, do extra exercises, etc. Thomas Zwerg will be holding them Wednesdays, 9.45-11.15 in WH C 537. He's there all semester, not just 3 weeks before the exam. Learn to ask for help!
Laptop use and talking in class
Laptop use in lectures in the past has proven distracting to instructors, fellow students, and birds passing by, so only use your laptop for taking notes or for official activities (i.e., using BlueJ on the current project). Your screen should be lowered to a three to six degree angle until you are ready to take notes. You can then raise the screen, type, and then lower it again. Reading your E-Mail, Skyping/IMing, surfing, watching YouTube videos, Twittering, etc. are strongly discouraged, as they distract the people sitting behind you.
I understand that you want to speak with your neighbor about stuff, or are perhaps afraid to ask a question out loud, so you turn to your neighbor. This is immensely annoying to the person teaching the class, as we are not behind a TV screen, but have to put up with multiple such distractions. If you are talking about the party this weekend, then do it after class. Surely you are adult enough to keep quiet for 90 minutes! And if you have a question - there will be 10 more people with the same question. Be brave, and ask - and maybe we can start a discussion!
Assignments and Grades
During the term, there will be 12 graded exercises numbered 0-11. Yes, this is how we count in Java. The graded exercises will be written reports on programming experimentation. There will be a 2-hour online examination on or about July 19. We will have 2 shifts of exams, Group 1 and Group 2. The examination will cover Java programming and conceptual understanding in ways that may be difficult to assess during the laboratory sessions.
Your grade in Info1 will be a weighted mixture of the evaluated elements of the course (Lecture summaries, lab reports and exam). The partial grades will be assessed as follows:
| Stars | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ****+ | Exceptional - above and beyond the call of duty. Very seldom. Additional red star. |
| ****- | Excellent: All of the exercises completed and an excellent report. |
| ***-- | Very good: All of the exercises completed, and a good report that may have some minor problems. |
| **--- | Good: Something is missing, although the report is good, or the report has major problems. |
| *---- | Satisfactory: Nothing worked, but you had a good report. |
| ----- | Nothing worked, but you managed to scrape together a report. Or you did a million bells and whistles, but turned in a half-page report using bullet lists of misspelled sentence fragements that are, however, technically a report on time. |
| X | Late work, not handed in |
Missing one laboratory will add 0,3 to your grade (i.e. lower your grade).
Missing two laboratories will add 0,7 to your grade
Missing three
laboratories will add 1,0 to your grade and may cause me to not permit you to take the exam.
The Long and winding road, CC-by-nc-nd, foreby, 2008 |
Wanderer, your footsteps are From Selected Poems of Antonio Machado |
Laboratory sessions are an essential part of the course. Laboratory assignments are posted on the home page and linked from the schedule. Finger exercises may be given in the text and should be worked by yourself before class to check your knowledge of the materials. You are encouraged to work in groups on them.
The reports need not be especially beautiful, but they should use complete sentences in English or German and concisely explain the above points. We appreciate good contrast and nicely-sized fonts. Grey on light blue or red on black in 8 pt does not do it for me. We do not want a click-by-click report, but a focused report on what happened in the lab. Taking digital notes during the lab will dramatically decrease the amount of time you need to spend on this. Don't forget to put your name, your E-Mail, the name of the course, the exercise number, and the date on the report. Use a spelling checker. The reports are to be submitted as a pdf to the Moodle area for exercise submission.
Missed Meetings
You are responsible for all material covered in each lecture. This material may not be covered elsewhere, so if you miss a meeting, you are responsible for getting notes from a friend or otherwise making up the material. We will not email you what happened in class. Handouts will not be distributed on paper outside of class, and there is no script or slides. You need to learn to take notes - one page with important key words that you want to look up afterwards. Maximum.
Attendance at laboratory is mandatory. If for any reason you cannot attend your scheduled laboratory session, it is your responsibility (and not a friend's) to make alternate arrangements with us as far in advance as is reasonably possible. In particular, if you have an athletic event or other scheduled conflict, we expect that you will discuss this with us as soon as the conflict is scheduled. We understand that unforseen events do arise (see below); however, your brother's wedding is (probably) not one of them.
The only exceptions to this policy (i.e., last-minute or after-the-fact rescheduling) will be in cases of significant and unanticipatable emergency. In these cases, we request documentation. In addition, we would appreciate it if you would make an effort to notify us at the earliest possible opportunity.
Late Work
Laboratory assignments will have due dates clearly indicated. Late work will not be accepted and counts as missed.
This section details the general course collaboration policy. Certain assignments require different kinds of, or restrictions on, collaboration. When the collaboration policy differs from that described here, it will be specified in the laboratory assignment.
We encourage you to work together on the exercises. They are designed for working in small groups, allowing you to help each other learn and to balance your knowledge and strengths. Note that collaboration extends to discussion and problem-solving, but not to writeups. We expect that any written work you turn in will be your own, though it may reflect joint preparation.
Experiment work is a more complex topic. It is often useful to discuss your program with peers or with course staff, and we strongly encourage this. It is particularly useful to do so as a means of debugging your program. Reading code written by others and having others critique your code are good ways to improve your programming style. However, it is of no benefit to you or to anyone else to have someone else actually do your experimental work. I expect that the default assumption (i.e., unless specified otherwise) is that experimental assignments are your own work, but may reflect input from others just as an essay edited by friends might. You should be the one who wrote the code you turn in.
Some labs will involve more explicit collaboration. In those cases, we will explicitly specify ways in which labs can be broken up, so that each person writes code but no one person writes the whole program, or indicate explicitly that a particular lab or portion of the lab may be programmed together, as a team. Even in this case, it is important that each team member have an opportunity to independently compose some code. Since the pre-lab will generally involve designing the code that you are going to write, it is best to also allocate responsibility for pieces of the code to members of the team at that time.
In each piece of work that you turn in, you must specify everyone with whom you have collaborated and each person's role in the collaboration (e.g., pre-lab, post-lab discussion and analysis, in-lab coding - specify which pieces or how responsibility was distributed - , debugging, or advice). Failure to specify such collaboration will be interpreted as a statement that you have not collaborated with others in your work. While this is acceptable under course policy, it is probably ill-advised. (Really. we want you to work together and to learn from each other!)
Examinations are diagnostic in nature and as a consequence should represent independent work.
Of course, copying of the work of others (especially from the Internet) and not quoting it properly is entirely unacceptable and may result in a failing grade for the course.
We also encourage you to make use of the collaboration room forum for questions. Do not worry - if you have a question, there are sure to be 5 others with the same question, so ask! Someone is bound to help, either a fellow student, the tutor, or me.
Our tutor, Thomas Zweig, will be holding a weekly tutorial. You can join if you want, it is not mandatory. He will also be available by email for questions.
Where to Find Additional Information
The primary source of information for this course is our web site. The home page for the course is located at http://www.f4.htw-berlin.de/~weberwu/info1. Course materials will be made available there and in the collaboration room. You can set your profile in Moodle to have news from the collaboration room sent to your normal email address.
| Last Change 2011-05-04 14:22 |
