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It is strongly suggested that you bring a thumbdrive to every Thursday session. If you don't already have a student account, you may get one by going to Science Center 129 with your student ID. Go as soon as possible. We will cover the chapters in the textbook following the schedule given in the tentative schedule (listed below) as closely as possible. There will also be a laboratory component for this course. You will be assigned a lab to complete each week, according to the schedule given. There will also be approximately 7 homework assignments, 2 exams, weekly quizzes, and a comprehensive final.

Calculation of your grade: Each exam will count for 20%. (Please note that I do not give make-up exams.) The comprehensive final exam will count for 25%. Homework assignments are worth a total of 15%. Lab are worth a total of 10%. Typically, labs will only be checked for completeness. If you finish the lab, you get full credit. Weekly quizzes will count towards 10% of your final grade. This weighting is tentative and may be adjusted or changed.

Lateness: Completed labs are due at the start of the following Thursday's lab session. Homework assignments are due at the start of class on the due date. Work may be turned in up to one week late. Late work will be penalized 50% of the score. After one week late, work will not be accepted.

Final grades will be given according to the following scale:

Academic honesty: This course will follow the University's standard policy on academic honesty. In particular, any cheating, or assisting another student.s cheating on any test, or the final exam will be penalized by either a zero on the test, or by failure of the course, at my discretion. On homework assignments, we will require you to document who did what for the assignment.

Finally, if you cheat twice during this course, you will fail the course. Remember that the University may inflict further penalties than listed here under the provisions of the published Academic Honesty Policy.

Attendance: You are expected to attend every class. However, a maximum of two cuts will be permitted without penalty. For each cut after the second, your final grade for the semester will be lowered by one level (for example, an A- will be lowered to a B+).

Students with disabilities: If you have a documented disability for which you are or may be requesting reasonable academic adjustments, you are encouraged to contact the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, 113 Science Center, 610-660-1774 or 610-660-1620 as early as possible in the semester. You may wish to take a look at their website.

Classroom(s) and meeting times: Click here for classrooms, meeting times, and office hours.

Open labs: If you do not finish a lab during regular lab hours, or if you want help on your homework assignments, there will be additional time during which a computer lab will be open for use by students taking this course. During these hours, a computer science graduate student will supervise the classroom. This student will be available to answer your questions and help you with your work. Please see the open lab schedule for locations, dates, and times. Please take advantage of the open labs, as they are a particularly valuable way to get individualized programming attention!

Tutoring: Free tutoring is available-- just let me know if you need one. In general, please do not hesitate to approach me if you have any problems with the course.

Time: To succeed in this course, you should plan to spend a significant amount of time outside of class.

General help: Saint Joseph's University maintains a Learning Resource Center that can help you with general issues like time management, exam taking strategies, etc. I encourage you to take a look at their website.

Software: This class will use the jGRASP development environment.

Tentative schedule:

BL 225 final: Tuesday 12/15 @ 11:30 AM . You must attend the final to which you are assigned.

BL 221 final: Friday 12/18 @ 11:30 AM . You must attend the final to which you are assigned.

A word of caution to students: This is a challenging course. Learning to solve problems using a computer is an arduous and serious undertaking. This class will require the a large investment of your time and effort to complete. If you do not have the time and energy to dedicate to performing the work for this class you should NOT enroll. The requirements for this class will NOT be reduced no matter how much other work you encounter in other classes you may be enrolled in.