CSCE 390--Fall 2009

Basics

Class time: 3:30-4:45 pm T-Th, Room 2A15 Swearingen
Office hours: 8:30-9:30am T-Th and by appointment.
This URL
My home page
The official syllabus for this course.
This is the Moodle site for this course. There will be some information put up on the Moodle site. Unlike this web page, which is available to all and sundry around the world, the Moodle website will be password limited to students in this class.
Please note that at the moment this site is available ONLY from a USC IP address or after having established a VPN connection to the college. Check with the college IT staff in 1D35 about VPN connections. This situation will change as soon as we can get the university IT operation to make some necessary changes.

Caveat

This page will be changing throughout the semester. You are responsible for reading this page on a regular basis, which means at least as often as once per class/lab event.

NEW ITEMS

I will try to ensure that the last three changes to the web resources for this course will be listed here. These will consist of changes both to these pages and to the stuff available on the Moodle website. You should be able to check here, then, that you are up to date.

Most recent change.
Next most recent change.
Next to next most recent change.

Rules, expectations, etc.

You are expected to read this website regularly and carefully. You are responsible for the material in this website, including rules and scheduling information.
You are expected to know who I am, how to get in touch with me by email, and how to find my office in person. (See the first point above.) If you google "duncan buell" then my USC web page is what comes up first on the list, so there is no excuse for someone in a computer science class not being savvy enough to find my contact information.
You are expected to turn in assignments on time to the dropbox. When you turn things in to the dropbox, you should check that in fact the material has been stored as it should be. You will also be required to print out and sign the web page, properly timestamped, that says that the dropbox has accepted your submission, and submit that at class time when the assignment is due. This is your "receipt" for submissions, and without this receipt I will not accept as an excuse that the dropbox has moved your assignment elsewhere. If for some reason the dropbox is not functioning, you should immediately send me an email with your assignment attached. This email must have a timestamp before the dropbox deadline. Late assignments will be penalized. (See the first two points above.)
You are expected to read your email as indicated below.
You are expected to attend class. Attendance will be taken, and it will affect your grade. See below for details. The Student Success Center has found that (to no one's great surprise) your GPA is likely to improve by a full one-half point simply if you attend class.
This course has a prerequisite of CSCE 240 and SPCH 140.
This course will cover, as indicated in the official syllabus, professional issues in the information technology professions; history and social context of computing; professional responsibilities; privacy; intellectual property; and risks and liabilities of computer-based systems.

Email

There is a CSE department email alias for CSCE 390, namely CSCE390-001, in the domain lists.cse.sc.edu. This alias sends email to the CSE departmental login userid@cse.sc.edu that you get with this course. A mass mailing to the entire class will be done through these mail aliases. Actually, any of you can send mail to this alias.

The mail alias of the previous paragraph sends mail to the CSE departmental login that you get with this course. You are responsible for reading mail sent to this account and the cec.sc.edu account of the college's mail server.

Texts, References, and Links to Useful Information

The link to the Moodle website is here.
There is no official text for this course. The material that will be covered will come from several sources, including you.
A link to material from Slashdot and similar sources can be found here.
Class notes 1.
The United States Constitution
Kati Compton and Mark Chang's guide for terrible presentations is linked off Dr. Compton's web page at Wisconsin.
Michael J. Quinn, Ethics for the Information Age, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2006.
Gift of Fire
The USC Career Center
Some links on electronic voting machines
ChoicePoint
The ACM software engineering code of ethics and professional practice
The National Society of Professional Engineers code of ethics for engineers
One web reference to the Challenger accident and Morton-Thiokol
The USC policy statements on
A link to the South Carolina (and other) reporting requirements concerning child pornography.
The Computing Research Association has a web section on intellectual property, mostly on university-industry sponsored research, but also with many links regarding patents and IP in the "knowledge economy".

Tests, Assignments, and Grading Scheme

Information on tests, assignments, and grading appears here.
This is a one-credit class. The schedule for the class is found here.
You will be doing written and oral presentations in this course. The rubrics on the basis of which you will be graded can be found here for a general rubric, here for a rubric on how to do presentations, and here for a rubric on how to write up a case study.
Here is another rubric on writing.
Here is another rubric on presentations.
Here is another bit of advice on presentations.
Here is another rubric on writing.
Here is another rubric on presentations.
It has been found, and should come as no surprise to anyone, that attendance at class correlates positively with your GPA. I will be taking attendance. For every three (3) unexcused absences, your grade will be lowered by one full letter. The judgement as to accepting the excuse is mine. Illness, family emergencies, and such are excusable. Returning home late from Myrtle Beach to avoid the traffic jam is not an excusable absence.
Unless otherwise indicated, there are no bonus points that can be earned in this class. If you want to total up points so as to get a good grade, then do the assignments as assigned.
Assignments will have due dates. Unless otherwise specified, the usual deadline will be that assignments are to be sent to the drop box by class time of the day the assignment is due, and the drop box will be closed as of that time. Late assignments will not be accepted without prior arrangement to accommodate truly extraordinary circumstances.

Academic Honesty

Assignments and examination work are expected to be the sole effort of the student submitting the work. Students are expected to follow the University of South Carolina Honor Code and should expect that every instance of a suspected violation will be reported. Students found responsible for violations of the Code will be subject to academic penalities under the Code in addition to whatever disciplinary sanctions are applied.

There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding of the concept of "your own work." In addition to the USC Code, some good sources of text for what is or is not acceptable behavior are the academic honesty policy statement from Harvey Mudd College, the policy statement from Professor Steven Huss-Lederman at Beloit College, and the text of part of the collaboration policy statement from MIT. You can expect your programming assignments to be checked against those turned in by other members of the class as well as code that I can find on the web. I expect the correlations between your work and that of others to be minimal.

I can also offer an operational definition of what you can do and of how you can distinguish "learning from a group discussion" and "turning in someone else's work." If, after having participated in a group activity, you can walk away, put the books down, have lunch, and then come back afterwards to re-create from your own head the material and techniques you discussed as a group, then you can legitimately say that you have learned from the group but the work you turn in is your own.

On the Proper Use of Computing Resources

Students are expected to be aware of the university policy on use of computing resources, including the Student Guidelines for Responsible Computing, as well as the college and departmental policies on proper use of computing resources. Every instance of a suspected violation will be reported. Students should be aware that neither the instructor nor the department are responsible for making alternative arrangements should improper use leading to revocation of access to departmental or college resources make it impossible for you to complete the programming assignments on time.

On the Nature of Academic Work

Students might also find relevant an essay from a professor at Georgia Tech.