CS 211 / 211H: Object Oriented Programming

Grade of C or better in CS 112.

All labs are in the Engineering Building. The Graduate Teaching Assistant leading each lab will be posted on the course web page.

Textbook

Required Building Java Programs, 3rd ed. By Reges and Stepp. It comes with additional exercises that will be good practice.

Required Lab Manual: Sections will be posted online on the course Piazza site for free download.

Computing

It is assumed you will have access to a computer with the ability to edit, compile, and run Java programs. Some university labs provide this ability and the first week of the course will cover how to set up your personal environment. If you have difficulty accessing a suitable environment, contact the course staff.

• Piazza is the central site for our announcements, documents repository, and discussion board. The announcements and discussion board are part of the required reading for the course.
  • All instructors and TAs can view all material on Piazza
  • Do not e-mail course staff about programming problems; use the discussion board.
  • Use public posts on Piazza to discuss programming project requirements, labs, and other material related to the course.
  • When prompted by a TA, use private posts on Piazza to share portions of your code pertaining to your questions.
  • Refer to the Piazza main page for etiquette on what should be posted publicly versus privately
  • Email course staff only for logistical issues such as meeting outside of office hours, missing lab/lecture, grading disputes, medical situations, etc. Email addresses are listed on Piazza (Resources → Staff).
• BlackBoard is used for project submission and to post grades
• Office Hours are listed for all Instructors and TAs on Piazza (Resources → Staff).

During lectures we will discuss programming concepts and instructors will provide demos of programming relevant to other course work. Programming labs will be for students to work on additional exercises and get immediate help from teaching assistants. In addition to attending the regular meeting times, you are strongly encouraged to visit the professor and teaching assistant(s) during office hours to further your understanding of the material: we are here to help you learn.

Readings from the textbook relevant to each lecture are listed in the schedule. You will increase your understanding of lectures by reading associated textbook sections ahead of time, though this is not assumed. We may provide additional reading material to supplement the textbook which will be posted on the course web page.

Labs meet once per week and attendance is required. Labs roughly alternate between Lab Exercises and Lab Quizzes/Tasks.

Associated with lab are readings from the Lab Manual posted online. It is assumed that students read the scheduled lab manual sections prior to each lab; doing so will make it relatively easy to complete the labs during the allowed time. This is one of our main sources of practice. If you don't practice, you won't succeed.

Students will receive a number of programming projects during the semester. Each project will involve writing programs and answering questions about them to illustrate an understanding of course material.

Each programming project will have an "Honors Problem" which honor section (H01) students must complete. Other sections are not required to do these sections and will not receive any credit for completing them but are free to try. The normal projects will normally be scored out of 100 points, and earning 100 points would be a perfect score. The honors problem will be some additional amount of points. If a particular project had a 15 point honors problem, then they would need 115 points to get a perfect score. Disregard blackboard's "points possible" claims if it doesn't match your style of section.

There will be two midterm exams during the course during the regularly scheduled lecture time. There will also be a comprehensive final exam at the end of the semester. Refer to the schedule for dates of the exams.

Final grades will be determined by scores obtained on the components below according to their associated weight.

If circumstances require it, the grading scale may be adjusted, generally in the students' favor.

Final grades will be assigned without rounding according to the following criteria. It is a 10-point scale per letter grade, with the upper and lower 2% of each 10% earning a + or -.

In order to recieve credit for completing Lab Exercises do the following.

• You must attend your assigned lab section and be present for attendance.
• Complete your program and pass the public tests that are provided.
• Credit will be assigned on the proportion of tests that are passed.
• Submit your exercises as per the instructions in each lab, usually zipping and uploading to Blackboard.
• Lab exercises may be completed submitted after lab ends so long as you have attended. Each lab lists the final deadline for submission, often during the following weekend.
• No late submissions for Lab Exercises will be accepted. Missing the deadline results in 0 credit.
• Failing to attend lab will result in a 0 for that week's lab exercises.

In order to receive credit for lab quizzes and tasks, you must be present in your assigned lab and submit your work by the end of the lab period. The lowest Quiz or Task score for the semester will be dropped. No lab makeups will be given under any circumstances. Plan to attend all labs so that in the event that you miss a quiz, the resulting 0 score is dropped.

No collaboration is allowed on programming projects unless explicitly indicated in the project description. Utilize the discussion board and office hours of course staff if you have questions about the projects.

Project grading will usually be divided into two portions weighted 50% for each portion.

1. Automatic Testing (50%): Public tests will be used to assess the correctness of programs. Running these tests while constructing your program will indicate exactly what your score on this portion will be.
2. Manual Inspection (50%): Each project will include a checklist of features your programs should exhibit. These usually comprise things that cannot be easily checked via unit tests such as good variable name selection, proper decomposition of a problem into multiple functions or cooperating objects, overall design elegance, and proper asymptotic complexity. These features will be checked by graders and assigned credit based on level of compliance.

The policies for project submission are as follows.

• Projects each have a deadline; no late work is accepted more than 48 hours after the deadline, and penalties for late work apply (see below). Work turned in more than 48 hours late doesn't count.
• Each student starts the semester with three Day-Late Tokens. Whenever a student turns in a project late, tokens are automatically applied to the assignment.
• A "ceiling penalty" of 25% is assessed each 24-hour period entered after the deadline (when late-tokens are gone). For example, if you turn in work half a day late (one 24-hour period late), you can't earn higher than 75%.
• Work turned in more than two 24-hour periods late will earn zero points and will only be graded as time permits. To clarify, you can't use tokens and/or penalties to turn work in 3 days late; this would earn zero points.
• You can submit work to BlackBoard as many times as desired. Only the last submission will be graded, and all others are ignored. If you anticipate being rushed around the submission deadline, be sure to submit a version before the deadline as a backup, in case you find yourself only moments late in meeting a deadline.
• GTAs grade the programming projects for the lab sections they teach.
• On-time submissions will generally be graded and available a week from submission, though exceptional circumstances may cause delays. Late submissions will be graded in as timely a fashion as schedules allow.
• Be sure you actually turned in your work! We need .java files, .class files are worthless as a submission. If you tend to keep earlier versions in extra files, make sure you turned in the final product, as that is what will be graded.
• BACK UP your work, always! Without fail, each semester multiple students will lose, drown, crack, reformat, magnetize, or generally destroy their computers at the worst possible time. Keep everything somewhere backed up, such as a DropBox or Google Drive folder, so that this doesn't happen to you.

• Your Mason ID is required for tests and final exams.
• Missing an exam results in a zero score and make-up exams will be considered only in situations involving death, near death, and documented dangerous diseases. Proof of such circumstances will be required for a make-up to be considered.
• Failing the final exam will result in an F in the entire course. Failing is defined as receiving less than 60% of the available points on the exam.

Address grading issues with the grader first via a direct email or in person. Email address for staff are on Piazza under Resources → Staff.

• Projects: Email your lab GTA
• Lab work: Email your lab GTA
• Exams: Email your Professor

This should be done respectfully either in person or via e-mail. If it is not possible to reach a resolution, the professor may be contacted by the grader to resolve the dispute.

If you have not initiated contact within 1 week after receiving a grade, the chance to contest the grade has closed.

Unless otherwise specified, all assessments in this course are individual efforts involving no unfair collaboration. For the purposes of this course, the following actions constitute scholastic misconduct (cheating) and will be reported.

• Directly copying someone else's solution to an assessment problem, including student solutions from a previous semester
• Directly copying an answer from some outside source such as the Internet or friend for a homework problem
• Making use of an Instructor Solution manual to complete problems
• Paying someone for a homework solution or submitting someone else's work as your own
• Posting solutions to any web site including public posts to our course web site
• Collaborating or copying someone else's answer during an exam
• Aiding or abetting any of the above
• Witnessing any of the above and failing to report it to an instructor immediately

Refer to the following links for additional information.

• Computer Science Department policies on scholastic dishonesty
• George Mason University Honor Code

Any instance of misconduct that is detected will be referred to the honor board and will likely result in failing the course. Be advised that the teaching team will be employing electronic means to detect plagiarism. This is extremely easy with computer code so keep your nose clean.

The purpose of this course is to learn about programming and learning from one another is a great help. To that end, the following actions will NOT be considered cheating in this course.

• Collaboration on Lab Exercises is allowed and encouraged. These are a great opportunity to help one another on work that counts towards your final grade. Just make sure that you understand any solutions you submit as per the PRIME DIRECTIVE.
• Reading and working together on the exercises contained in the Lab Manual with other students. The manual contains many good readings and exercises for unrestricted group work.
• Outside coding practice sites such as Coding Bat can be done in unrestricted groups for practice.
• If you are unsure whether a given collaboration is fair or not, stop the activity and clear it with your instructor.

At all times keep the PRIME DIRECTIVE in mind when studying with another student. The above collaborations should be limited to getting someone over a hurdle, not carrying them across the finish line.

The honors section (H01) will discuss more advanced topics than other sections of CS 211. Approximately 15% more work will be involved.

H01 will move through lecture material more quickly and explore additional topics relevant to CS. Students in H01 are expected to keep up with these additional topics as they may appear on the H01 tests and final exams.

Each programming project will have an "Honors Problem" which H01 students must complete. These problems may reflect the additional topics covered in lecture and often be more difficult than other portions of the project.

Grading projects for H01 students will be out of total points available including the honors section: each project will have 100 points plus an honors section, frequently worth up to 20 points. In such cases honors students will be scored as X / 120 for a score of X. Late projects will have the standard -25 pts deducted per day late.

• An H01 student who turns a project in on time and receives a 99 on it will get 99/120 = 82.5% for the project.
• If the same student turns in their work 1 day late without using a late token, they will receive min(99/120, 95/120) = 95/120 = 79.2%.