Time and Place:
Section 1: Thursdays 3:00pm - 4:40pm in LSC 118
Section 2: Fridays 10:00am - 11:40am in LSC 118
Section 3: Fridays 12:00noon - 1:40pm in LSC 118
Coordinator: Dr. R. McCloskey
Office: LSC 191
Telephone: 941-4221 (office),
941-7774 (CS Dept. office), 941-4250 (fax)
E-mail:
robert.mccloskey@scranton.edu
Office Hours:
McCloskey's
Instructors: TBA
Textbook: Same as that used in CMPS 144
Academic Code of Honesty (starting at page 30)
CTLE:
Services for Students
Catalog Description:CMPS 144L - Computer Science II Lab, 1 credit(Pre-requisites: CMPS 134 and CMPS 134L. CMPS 144 is required as a co-requisite, or as a pre-requisite (with departmental permission) Activities are undertaken that apply programming concepts from CMPS 144, including object-orientation (inheritance, polymorphism, iterators, generics), recursive techniques (recursive descent and ascent), the role of containers (e.g., stacks, queues, lists, trees, graphs) in the construction of algorithms, analysis of algorithms, and concurrency. |
To earn a "Satisfactory" final grade, a student must have earned "Satisfactory" or "Noteworthy" grades (see below) on at least three-quarters of the lab sessions held.
Each weekly lab session is scheduled for a 100 minute time period and consists of several activities, each to be completed in collaboration with an assigned lab partner, and under the supervision of the lab instructor. Students work in teams of two unless the number of students present for a lab session is odd, in which case there should be one team of three. Lab partnerships are routinely changed and likewise adjusted on the fly as needed.
For each lab session each student will receive one of the following four grades: Absent, Unsatisfactory, Satisfactory, or Noteworthy. Generally, team partners receive the same grade for a lab session, but each student has the responsibility to interact with the lab instructor to make their individual understanding known so as to discern distinctions. The difference between Unsatisfactory and Satisfactory is, of course, the most critical one. Generally, Satisfactory understanding and accomplishment is evident when questions are correctly answered and tasks accomplished within the time allowed. It is not necessary to get things right the first time; rather, the key thing is to work thoughtfully and to be able to articulate valid explanations of your thinking and of your answers and to likewise explain what you have done to the lab instructor as needed.
Some of the activities undertaken are designed to be evaluated by the lab instructor "on the spot" with each team demonstrating and explaining what they have just done. Other activities require each team to develop some digital artifacts (generally source code files) that they test and refine before submitting for evaluation by the lab instructor after the session has ended.
Each lab session will begin with a brief introduction by the lab instructor meant to set forth the goals of the session and to relate the activities to be undertaken with the subject matter currently being studied in CMPS 144. As each activity is presented the lab instructor is there to interact with the entire class, separate teams, and individual students as appropriate and as needed in order to guide everyone in the successful accomplishment of the activity.
In order to facilitate interaction and to focus on the task at hand, each team is limited to the use of just one computer, and this limitation will be strictly enforced. Thus each team will utilize the personal computer of one team member for each lab session. LSC 116 and LSC 118 have recently been remodeled to provide "workstation areas" providing ready hook up to a dual monitor setup via a single HDMI connection, along with ready hook-up to an external keyboard and mouse via USB connection. Given the wide variety of display connections in use on computers today, each student is expected to provide an appropriate cable allowing their computer to connect to the provided HDMI cable. To avoid distraction, the use of cell phones, tablets and other such devices during lab will generally be disallowed.
These lab sessions provide structured opportunities for every student to focus on specific questions and tasks in collaboration with others (team partner most immediately, but also with the other students in the lab and with the lab instructor) in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter of CMPS 144. Students are required to do things in lab; things that they may not immediately know how to do. The "lab setting" provides the opportunity to analyze and synthesize what you do know so you can come up with questions, contemplate answers and most importantly try things out. Thus, not getting things "right" the first time should be expected, and thoughtful persistence will be needed. Once successful you then know more than you did before and are then positioned to learn more.
Since CMPS 144L serves to supplement CMPS 144, each lab session provides opportunities for the discussion of current and past CMPS 144 material. In particular, time is available to talk about current and past CMPS 144 out-of-class assignments.