Administrivia

Course meetings will be on Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 2:20-3:35pm in room 229 of the Social Sciences Building.

Staff

Text Books

You will use one primary book as well as online readings in the course. Copies are available at the Duke book store, but you can find also find it and other useful resources at the Gothic bookstore, Barnes and Noble (also at New Hope Commons), or Amazon books. In general you should read the text in order to be prepared to ask and answer questions in class. If you have looked at material before it is discussed in class you will get much more out of the class work. Although time will be given at the beginning of lecture for you to ask questions about the reading, the majority of the lecture will be an extension of the reading, not a summary.

Computing

This course will be taught in a workshop format in an Interactive Computer Classroom, ICC, that contains twenty HP workstations running Windows. If some of the software and descriptions do not include other computing platforms, like Macintosh or Linux, it is not meant to show a bias, simply the reality of the working environment.

In general, students will be expected to be active participants in group exercises involving the computers available during class time. This makes it vital that you prepare before coming to class. In fact, most of the graded work for the course will be done during the class meeting time and why we feel that three 75 minute periods each week are needed.

You should expect to work with another student during class. This process is often referred to as pair programming, which is defined as follows:

In other words, it is essential that all students in the group are active participants. Done right, this can be a very positive experience for all involved. Here are some students enthusiastic responses to pair programming.

Policies

Information Online