Syllabus

Course Work. This course is a programming course. You will have five programming assignments, ten lab assignments, five quizzes, and the final exam. The final grade will be calculated according to the following schema:

Participation includes participation in lectures and Canvas posting (discussions). Please notice that you will receive points for lecture and discussion assignments.  If you cannot attend a lecture, you can watch a corresponding lecture video in the Assignment folder under the name Video Lectures. You have to submit the assignment to get credit for the lecture assignment (if you attend the lecture, you do not have to watch the video).

Class Participation. Class participation includes activities connected to lecture assignments and participation in discussion forums on Canvas.

Quizzes. There will be five quizzes; however, one quiz with the lowest score will be dropped from the final grade calculation. Quizzes will be administered on Wednesdays and should take around 30-40 minutes to complete. If you need special accommodations, please contact me and I can schedule a quiz at a different time. 

Final Exam. There will be a final exam on TBA. If you are ill or have an unexpected family emergency, you must notify the instructor as soon as possible and before the examination day. Otherwise, you may have a zero grade on your exam.

Programming Assignments. All five programming assignments must be done individually and have to be submitted on time on Canvas. All assignments will be graded according to the grading rubrics published under each assignment folder. Please notice that late assignments have a penalty: If you submit a programming assignment one day later, you will get a 5% deduction, within three days – a 10% deduction, within one week - a 20% deduction, if you submit it later than one week, you will get a 40% deduction.

You can consult the instructor, teaching assistants, tutors, or students about general approaches of the program, its syntax, and debugging the code. However, do not copy other’s code or share your own code with other students or post the code on the Internet. If the same or very similar programming codes are found between students, the students will receive a zero score for the assignment. Administrative actions may also be taken with the university. Please read about the Academic Integrity Policy written below.

Labs. You will have ten lab assignments. Lab assignments are different from programming assignments! They can be redone multiple times and submitted late without any penalty. The main purposes of lab assignments are to learn Python libraries and packages and to prepare you for quizzes and programming assignments. They will include the following topics: setting up your work environment, installing IDLE, using sftp and ssh, practicing with Python built-in standard packages including random, math, datetime, re (regular expressions), and internal and external libraries such as Turtle, Tkinter, Matplotlib, NumPy and others. Lab assignments should be completed and submitted on Canvas. Lab assignments can be done with help of tutors, teaching assistants, or in collaboration with other students.

Academic Integrity Policy. Academic integrity is the cornerstone of a university education. Academic dishonesty diminishes the university as an institution and all members of the university community. It tarnishes the value of a UCSC degree. All members of the UCSC community have an explicit responsibility to foster an environment of trust, honesty, fairness, respect, and responsibility. All members of the university community are expected to present as their original work only that which is truly their own. All members of the community are expected to report observed instances of cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty in order to ensure that the integrity of scholarship is valued and preserved at UCSC.

In the event a student is found in violation of the UCSC Academic Integrity policy, he or she may face both academic sanctions imposed by the instructor of record and disciplinary sanctions imposed either by the provost of his or her college or the Academic Tribunal convened to hear the case. Violations of the Academic Integrity policy can result in dismissal from the university and a permanent notation on a student’s transcript.

For the full policy and disciplinary procedures on academic dishonesty, students and instructors should refer to the Academic Integrity pageLinks to an external site. at the Division of Undergraduate Education.

Accommodations and External Help. UC Santa Cruz is committed to creating an academic environment that supports its diverse student body. If you are a student with a disability who requires accommodations to achieve equal access in this course, please submit your Accommodation Authorization Letter from the Disability Resource Center (DRC) to me privately by email or during my office hours within the first two weeks of the quarter. At this time, I would also like us to discuss ways we can ensure your full participation in the course. I encourage all students who may benefit from learning more about DRC services to contact DRC by phone at 831-459-2089, or by email at drc@ucsc.edu.

Small Group Tutoring. Small Group Tutoring (SGT) supports students academically to advance educational equity by designing inclusive learning environments outside of the classroom. SGT is open to all students enrolled in the class and they must sign up on online system: TutorTrac. You can sign up using this link: https://ucsc.go-redrock.com/tracweb40. (Links to an external site.) You can also find the link on the website: https://lss.ucsc.edu/index.html.Links to an external site.

Title IX. The university cherishes the free and open exchange of ideas and enlargement of knowledge. To maintain this freedom and openness requires objectivity, mutual trust, and confidence; it requires the absence of coercion, intimidation, or exploitation. The principal responsibility for maintaining these conditions must rest upon those members of the university community who exercise most authority and leadership: faculty, managers, and supervisors. The university has therefore instituted a number of measures designed to protect its community from sex discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and other related prohibited conduct. Information about the Title IX OfficeLinks to an external site., the online reporting link (Links to an external site.), applicable campus resources, reporting responsibilities, the UC Policy on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment (Links to an external site.), and the UC Santa Cruz Procedures for Reporting and Responding to Reports of Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment can be found at titleix.ucsc.eduLinks to an external site.. The Title IX Office is actively responding to reports and requests for consultation. If you are not currently working with someone in the office and want to make a report/request a consult, you can expect the fastest response by using our online reporting link. (Links to an external site.) For more information please visit the Title IX Operations under Covid-19Links to an external site. page.