Copies of that text are available both at the Barnes and Noble campus bookstore, as well as Beck's Bookstore, or various online book vendors.
Additionally, there are some other books which try to give an overview of computer science in the same spirit as the book we have chosen. Though we have chosen not to use the following books, we list them for your interest:
The unofficial prerequisite is that, although we do not expect students to have any formal training in computing, we will expect that the great majority of students enter the class with at least some experience as a user of computers. Specifically, we will assume that students are comfortable with creating text files, sending and reading email, and using a web browser to explore content on the Internet. Students who do not have this experience are certainly welcome in the class however they should be aware that these topics are not going to be covered during lecture. The instructor can provide advice for gaining such experience.
The web page contains some information (e.g. solutions, submitted assignments, individual grades) which is more sensitive and therefore which will be available to students in the class only after they have identified themselves properly. To gain access to these parts of the web page, a student must first complete the following online questionnaire, creating a unique identity and password.
Details of the procedure are discussed at http://www.cs.luc.edu./~mhg/comp150/submit/.
Each assignment will contain one or more practice problems which are not to be turned in and which can be discussed freely between classmates. The problems which are to be submitted for a grade, however, must be done entirely individually. A more complete explanation of our policy towards Academic Honesty is given below. Most assignments will also offer a small extra credit challenge to those interested.
When it comes to learning and understanding the general material covered in class or the practice problems, you may certainly use other references and you may have discussions with other students in this class or other people from outside of this class.
However, work which is submitted for this course must be entirely your own. You are in no way to discuss such assignments, nor are you to use or or search for direct or indirect assistance from any outside references. The only exception to the above rule is that you are free to have consultations with the instructor, teaching assistant, or members of the organized tutoring centers on campus. Even in these cases, if you receive significant help you should make sure to document both the source of the help as well as the extent.
Any violations of the general Loyola policy or the policies outlined in this handout will be dealt with severely. Penalties will apply as well to a student who is aiding another student. Any such violations will result in a minimum penalty of a zero on the given assignment which cannot be dropped, and severe or repeated violations will result in an immediate failing grade in the course. Furthermore all incidents will be reported in writing to both the department and the appropriate dean.
For assignments, we wish to allow students to continue to work comfortably beyond the official deadline when a little more time will result in more progress, while at the same time discourage students from falling several days behind pace and jeopardizing their success on future assignments. Our solution is the following exponentially decaying late formula (some have suggested that we should offer extra credit to anyone who fully understands this formula).
We will consider an assignment submission ``complete'' whenever any part of the assignment is last submitted or modified. Any assignment which is not complete promptly by its due date and time will be assessed a penalty based on the formula S = R * e-t/6, where S is the grade given, R is the grade the work would have gotten if turned in on time and t is the amount of time (in days or fractions thereof) the work was late.
Examples:
The above policies will be waived only in an ``emergency'' situation with appropriate documentation.
For those who do wish to use our department labs as a regular work place, this account allows use of machines in our department labs in rooms DH340, DH341 or DH342. With each account, a student is given a home directory (H:\MyHome) in which files can be stored throughout the semester. Information on the lab policies, including a schedule of open hours, is available at www.cs.luc.edu/technology.html.
Finally, each user can send and receive email from this account. As an example, a student with User ID ``aturing'' receives email sent to aturing@cs.luc.edu.
Most of the software available on our department network is also available on the IS network. One disadvantage of the campus-wide network is that students must save their files to a disk.
To faciliate CS students working in IS labs, we have worked with IS to allow students access to the CS department NT file system from any of the IS labs at Loyola. This allows you to work in an IS lab, while saving and loading files directly to your Computer Science home directory. (Note: the drive letters used will not be mapped to the same letters as on our department machines.) Instructions can be found at: www.cs.luc.edu/lab/faq/atIT/itlabs.html