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Herbert J. Bernstein
Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science
Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science
1300 William Floyd Parkway, B205, Shirley NY 11967

90466 CSC 1009N -- Introduction to Spreadsheets and Data Analysis -- Fall 2012
Online Course

This web page is http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/CSC1009F12/CSC1009_Syllabus.html
Copyright © 2009, 2012 Herbert J. Bernstein and other parties. All rights reserved.

This is the syllabus for CSC 1009 for Fall 2012. As the course moves forward, students should return to this page frequently for updated material.

Catalog description:

CSC 1009N. An Introduction to Spreadsheets and Data Anlysis 3 credits

This course will focus on applications of spreadsheet software and the macro programming language Visual Basic for Applications. Microsoft Excel will be used and the course will be taught in a computer laboratory environment. Topics covered include worksheets, spreadsheet functions, charts, objects, sorting, tools, add-ins, integrating applications, and the VBA programming language.

The Fall 2012 section is:

90466  CSC  1009N  0  3.00  Intro to Spreadsh& Data Anal  Online 
  Sep 04, 2012  Dec 19, 2012  W  TBA  Internet teaching on line   
  Instructor(s): Herbert J. Bernstein 

Instructor:

Office Hours:

Note that, in general, Dr. Bernstein will be at the Brookhaven campus on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons and at the Oakdale Campus on Wednesday afternoons. If at all possible, please use email to schedule meetings in advance to avoid conflicts with other students and other obligations of the instructor.

For more information see http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/HJB_Contact_Info.html.

Required Texts:

Students are responsible for all assigned readings even if the material is not discussed with the instructor.

Required Materials

Students are expected to have their text books no later than the second week of the semester.

Attendance:

This is an online class, with no on-site meetings. The major risk in taking an on line course is in failing to make steady progress through the semester. Therefore, all students are required both to demonstrate their progress with on-line quizzes and assignments and to attend at least one online meeting every 2 weeks with the instructor to discuss the work they are doing for this class. Students are encouraged to schedule these online meetings in groups via Skype, but they may meet the requirement with individual Skype meetings or by on-site meetings during office hours.

Students who fail to maintain regular contact with the instructor prior to the midterm will get a midterm warning and be advised to withdraw from the course.

Grading Policy:

As noted above students will be given weekly quizzes. The weekly quizzes are open-web, open-book, open-notes quizzes, but that won't work in your favor if you don't do the reading.

Every student will be required to maintain a contemporaneous hardbound notebook recording all significant activities related to this course. The notebook should record the major topics discussed, questions about the subject matter of the course and the answers when they are found. You will find a good notebook very helpful in taking the final, but, more importantly, the process of reading and taking detailed notes on what you are reading will help you to learn the material.

In addition to the notebook, you will need an on-line blog and website for this course, both to act as a supplement to the hardbound notebook and to provide a path for the submission of assignments. You may not submit spreadsheets as attachments to email. They are not likely to get past the instructor's spam filer. Instead, you should post spreadsheets to your web site and send the URL to the instructor.

You are required to do a project to add to your permanent portfolio to complete this course. See the new Dowling College Computer Science Portfolios policy. For this course your project should be a useful simulation spreadsheet of your own creation. You should think terms of a project you would like to show to a prospective employer or graduate school. Your name will be on it, and everybody in the world will be able to see it and try it. Your skills will be on display for everybody to see. Do a good job.

All students will be required to communicate with the instructor via email, and many assignments will require work to be submitted via email.

Whether you use your Dowling email account as your primary email or not, you are required to get a Google gmail account as well, so that you will have access to the various Google products you need to do the work for this course.

Students must do the assignments steadily throughout the semester, not just to show that they know the material, but to give them the practice they need to learn the material well. Therefore, students are encouraged to submit all assignments on time. If an assignment is submitted one week late there will be a 50% penalty for that assignment. No more than three late assignments will be accepted during the semester. No assignments will be accepted that are two or more weeks late.

There will not be an in-class midterm exam. The mid-term evaluation will be based on the notebook, assignments and quizzes.

An open notes, open computer/calculator final will be given. The final will be given on line during a supervised Skype session.

Course Syllabus

The course will begin with administrative matters and some issues not covered in the texts. Then we will discuss how to use Excel or Calc (spreadsheet programs) following the Gips text, the Artymiak text and various web resources. Most of what you need to do with spreadsheets can be done with what you will have learned to that point, and you should start on your porfolio project then. For completeness we will also cover some aspects of spreadsheet macro programming using various web resources. For security reasons, VBA macros are not as widely used as they used to be. Indeed they are complete disabled on some systems to stop hackers. Security is less of a problem with Open Office Calc macros.

Course Objectives

Assignments

Please consult the course assignments page frequently.

Updated 30 August 2012.