21369 CSC 1023N - 0 - Introduction to Computer Science Spring 2012 On Line Course Herbert J. Bernstein ( ) Syllabus

This web page is http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/CSC1023S12/CSC1023_Syllabus.html
Copyright © 2001 -- 2004, 2010, 2011 Herbert J. Bernstein and other parties. All rights reserved.

This is the syllabus for an on line section of CSC 1023N for Spring 2012. As the course moves forward, students should return to this page frequently for updated material.

Catalog descriptions:

This Syllabus is for the following Spring 2012 section:

Instructor:

• Name: Prof. Herbert J. Bernstein
• Office: Brookhaven Campus B111B, Lab: B205
• Phone: +1-631-244-1328
• Email:

Office Hours:

• by appointment:
• Tuesday 12:30 pm -- 2:00 pm in B205 at the Brookhaven campus
• Thursday 12:30 pm -- 1:30 pm in B205 at the Brookhaven campus
• Friday 12:30 pm -- 2:00 pm in B205 at the Brookhaven campus

Students have the option of meeting with the instructor either on-site or via Skype. In order to avoid conflicts with other students and other obligations of the instructor, if possible please make an appointment via email.

Note that, in general, Dr. Bernstein will be at the Brookhaven campus on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and on the Oakdale campus on Wednesday afternoons. Meetings on the Oakdale campus will be in KSC 103. Meetings at the Oakdale campus are by appointment only.

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

Required Texts:

• Michael Dawson, "Python: Programming for the Absolute Beginner," Third Edition, Course Technology PTR, 2010, Cengage Learning, Boston, ISBN 978-1-4354-5500-9
• Carl Reynolds and Paul Tymann, "Schaum's Outlines, Principles of Computer Science", McGraw-Hill, 2008, Boston, ISBN 978-0-07-146051-4

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

Recommended Reading:

The following text is recommended for all prospective computer science majors

• Knuth, D, "The Art of Computer Programming", Vols 1-4A, 3rd ed., Boxed set, Pearson, 2011, ISBN 978-0-32-175104-1.

This four volume set is an essential reference for any serious computer scientist. There will be no specific assignments from Knuth, but reading it may well help in understanding the required text and the lectures and to get ready for a career in Computer Science.

Required Supplies:

Keeping clear written records is an important part of working in any scientific field. It is particularly important in Computer Science, where there are very complex, non-obvious decisions to make. In addtion to maintaining a written notebook, each student will be required to maintain a course blog (see below).

Required Computer Accounts:

Each student has a Dowling College email account. In addition, each student is required to sign-up for a Google gmail account, so that they will have access to Google Sites and Google Blogger (blogspot.com). There will be a common course blog at http://yayahjbcsc1023s12.blogspot.com. In addition, each student is required to maintain their own blog for the course. Once you have a gmail account, you should create a blog for the course using your gmail user name followed by CSC1023S12. You will use the blog to discuss your own progress and to maintain useful brief notes for the course.

You will also need a Google Sites account to post your assignments and to maintain notes that are not appropriate for your course blog. There will be a common course web site at https://sites.google.com/site/yayahjbcsc1023s12/. Each student is required to maintain their own course web site, to which they will post their assignments. Once you have a gmail account, you should create a Google Sites course web page using your gmail user name followed by CSC2012S12.

In addition, each student will have an account on a unix system at Dowling College, on arcib.dowling.edu. Those accounts will be useful in running compilers and practicing creations of web pages.

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 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:

• Graded assignments and weekly quizzes: 10%
• Course project: 20%
• Midterm: 30%
• Comprehensive Final: 40%

Many assignments will be given for drill. Students will be shown how to set up a minimal web site early in the course. All completed assignments must be posted on the student's web page by the due date. Students will be required to "turn in" some of those assignments for grading by sending an email with the appropriate URLs. Students will be given weekly brief quizzes related to, but not necessarily identical to, earlier assignments.

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, and all activities related to the course project (see below).

You will be required to show your notebook to the instructor via Skype.

Students will be required to complete a course-related web page programming project, which is to be done as an individual programming effort.

An open open-notes, open computer/calculator midterm and an open-notes, open computer/calculator final will be given. In general, no assignments will be accepted late and no makeups will be given for missed quizzes or examinations. Requests for exceptions to this policy will be considered only for the most pressing reasons (illness requiring hospitalization, death in the family, reserve call-up, etc.), must be submitted in writing or by email in a timely manner, and will be granted only if the instructor has sound reason to believe that the student is highly likely to master the material of the course within the current semester.

Course Syllabus

The syllabus and the course objectives that follow are derived in part from the IEEE/ACM "Computing Curricula 2001 Computer Science" - Final Report - (December 15, 2001) by the Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula, IEEE Computer Society, Association for Computing Machinery.

• Administrative matters
  • Dowling student accounts.
  • Linux accounts.
    • Setting up a web page.
  • Diagnostic Quiz.
• Overview of the course
• Introduction to Professional Issues: Ethical issues; fiduciary responsibility; Murphy's Law; KISS.
• Solving problems with computers
• Background
  • History of computing
  • Introduction to the Web and HTML
  • Creating a personal web page
  • Introduction to programming
  • Overview of programming languages and the compilation process
  • Basic organization of the von Neumann machine
• Fundamental programming constructs
• Introduction to Python syntax
• Relationships among Python, C, C++, Java, JavaScripts, PHP and HTML
• Software development methodology
• Fundamental concepts used in programming
• Algorithms and problem-solving
• Fundamental data structures
• Decision-making. The if statement and the if-else statement
  e.g. craps.html
• Loops; while loops and for loops
• Lists and Dictionaries
  e.g. convert_story.py
• Using Python on the web
  • Passing arguments to a Python CGI script
  • Active Web Pages
• Functions
• I/O
• Objects
  • critter_caretaker_2.py
  • critter_caretaker_3.py
  • blackjack2.py
• Graphics
  • example from text: pizza_panic.py
    chef.bmp
    pan.bmp
    pizza.bmp
    wall.bmp
    livewires for Python 3, livewires.zip
    livewires for Python 2, livewires_25.zip
    pygame installer
    

Course Objectives

• Understanding what computers are and how they are used in the modern world.
• Understanding what programmers and computer scientists do.
• Understanding professional responsibilities of a programmer and the limitations of hardware and software.
• Understanding the contributions of several pioneers in the computing field.
• Understanding the difference in daily life before and after the advent of personal computers and the Internet.
• Understanding significant continuing trends in the history of the computing field.
• Understanding the concepts of the Internet and of the World Wide Web.
• Understanding how to create web pages.
• Understanding how to create computer programs.
• Being able to modify and expand short program fragments that use standard conditional and iterative control structures and methods.
• Understanding the meaning of primitive data types.
• Understanding the meaning of lists and other data structures.
• Being able to choose appropriate conditional and iteration constructs for a given programming task.
• Understanding the mechanics of parameter passing.
• Understanding the relationship between algorithms and the problem-solving process.
• Understanding properties that contribute to algorithms being "good".
• Being able to create algorithms for solving simple problems.
• Being able to use pseudo code, charts/graphs or a programming language to implement, test, and debug algorithms for solving simple problems.
• Understanding strategies that are useful in debugging.

Assessable Learning Outcomes

All of the course objectives stated above are desired learning outcomes, and students should strive of achieve all of them. Certain objectives, however, are strong indicators of having mastered most of the remaining objectives. The following will explicitly be assessed:

• Understanding the professional responsibilities of a programmer and the limitations of hardware and software.
• Understanding the concepts of the Internet and of the World Wide Web.
• Understanding how to create web pages.
• Being able to modify and expand short program fragments that use standard conditional and iterative control structures and methods.
• Understanding the meaning of primitive data types.
• Understanding the meaning of lists and other data structures.
• Being able to choose appropriate conditional and iteration constructs for a given programming task.
• Understanding the relationship between algorithms and the problem-solving process.
• Being able to create algorithms for solving simple problems

In addition, basic learning skills, critical thinking, a scholarly approach to learning and diligent attention to all the material presented in lectures, in readings and available to the student from other sources are assessable outcomes of this course.

Projects

Each student will be expected to display a solid grasp of the concepts of the design of web pages with active content by creating a web-based project. Each student will work on his or her own project. Each student will be required to explain to demonstrate their project to the class, explain how it works, and to respond to questions from the class and from the instructor on the project. Students may propose their own project no later than the 4th week of class. If no project is proposed, the instructor will assign a project.

Prerequisites

Any work with computers requires some background in mathematical concepts and logical reasoning. The skills in the DVM0001 course description are needed to be able to cope with the material presented. Creating web pages is a form of creative writing. Students must have sound skills in speaking, reading and writing English. There will be an ungraded diagnostic quiz given during the first lecture to help students understand how well prepared they are for the work in this course.

If students' English and math skills are weak or nonexistent they may have serious difficulty doing the assignments for the course. In that case, intensive tutoring and/or delaying taking this course until their skills are better aligned to the demands of the course may be worth considering. Students with questions about their English and math skills should discuss the matter with the instructor.

Assigments

Please consult the course assigments page frequently.

Secure Remote Access with GUI

Using VNC via SSH: vnc.html

Dowling Computer Club

If you're interested in joining with your fellow students in developing and maintaining a web site, or pursuing your exploration of computer hardware or software, you might want to consider joining the Dowling Computer Club. Just follow the link for further details:

Dowling College Computer Club Web Site