CPSC 203 Course page: fall 2018

Index for the course website:

• Attention: how this course has changed since it was last offered/current state
• Administrative information: information about course textbooks, access to many external websites such as TopHat Monocle and My-IT lab
• Information about the 203 help desk "CT")
• Course topics and notes
• Graded components of the course and schedule of due dates

Attention:

Imposed budget cuts required changes to this course. There will no longer be paid Teaching Assistants teaching Word, Excel and programming in a computer lab. (There will however be Teaching Assistants who staff the help desk for this course:  The 203 Continuous Tutorial or the "CT". Also I have volunteered to provide additional lecture time to make up a bit for lab time that was removed. Also the use of MY-IT lab (for Word and Excel) has been added. Because tutorials have been removed, some of the skills that students found more challenging (i.e. 'hard') have also been removed (e.g. nested IF-functions in Excel) or presented in a simpler form (absolute and relative cell references in Excel, nested-IF and Do-While constructs in VBA programming). Because some topics were dropped a side effect is that there's now an opportunity to cover some topics in greater depth (such as computer security and the Internet) as well as include the use of MS-Word. Overall the redesigned course was still created to be practical rather than theoretical.

If you want determine if the redesigned course is for you here is a rough outline of skills in Word and Excel that you will learn and apply this term.

Administrative information

• Contact information for James Tam
  • Office: ICT 707
  • Office hours: Monday  & Tuesday, 3:00 - 3:50 PM
  • Email: tam@ucalgary.ca
  • Instructor schedule for fall 2018 schedule
• Additional help:  The 203 Continuous Tutorial or the "CT".
  • CT schedule (commence the week of Sept 9 - 15) [CT Schedule]
  • If you don't have your own portable computer with Office on it when you go to the CT make sure you bring your file or files on a flash drive if you are working on an assignment. That's because you won't be able to login to the computers on the first floor of Math Sciences where the CT is located. (The Windows machines are reserved for CPSC students in higher level courses)
• Course textbooks
  • "Computer Science Chop Suey! (Lite Edition): Computer and Software Fundamentals, Practical Problem Solving.", James Tam, Wiley 2018. (Make sure you get the 'Lite' Edition with only two chapters rather the full version). Paper version: ISBN 9781323889428, Electronic book: 9781119545743.
    • UC bookstore prices: $20.73 (paper print), $13.24 (eBook)
  • "Package Title: Pearson Collections CPSC 203 Computer Science plus MyLab IT with Pearson eText--Access Card RVP", Mulbery, Krebs, Hogan, Cameron, Davidson, Lau, Lawson, Williams (Book series creator: Grauer), Pearson 2018. Paper version: ISBN 9780135419311, Electronic book: 9780134455877.
    •     UC bookstore prices:  $124.21 (paper print), $103.76 (eBook)
    • Online learning and evaluation system (access comes with the Pearson 'Collections' textbook): MY-IT lab: https://www.pearsonmylabandmastering.com
      • Help resources for using My-It lab
        • Getting started (Tam produced)
        • Getting started (from Pearson, the publisher)
        • Using My-IT lab for CPSC 203 (Tam produced)
      • Free trial access (14 days only)
        • When registering instead of entering an access code or payment information select the link for trial access.
        • If you need help with the process here is an [instruction file]
      • Contact information for Pearson (publisher of My-IT lab)
        • Technical support phone number (24/7): 1-800-677-6337
        • Technical support for live chat: https://support.pearson.com/getsupport/s/contactsupport (enter all the information on the form and select 'chat')
        • Link with more help information:
          http://help.pearsoncmg.com/pegasus/help/hed-stu/Content/6_get_help/contact_customer_support.htm
           
• TopHat Monocle, electronic practice exam questions for lecture: [Tam: how to guide] [Full help document]
• Estimating your term grade: Grade calculator spreadsheet

Course topics

Topic	Relevant Chapters from "Chop Suey! (Lite)"	Relevant Chapters from "Pearson Collections"
Introduction to the course and administrative information [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint]
Introduction to computers: hardware fundamentals and practical usage [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint]	Chapter 1 (Chop Suey)
Word processing: Word [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Examples]		Word Chapters: 1 - 4 (Pearson Collections)
The Internet [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint]
Spreadsheets: Excel [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Examples]		Excel Chapters: 1 - 4, 9 (Pearson Collections)
Special guest lecturer Wed Oct 24: Jennifer Lee from the University of Calgary library (library resources [Presentation: PDF] [Presentation: PowerPoint]
VBA programming in Word Part I: [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Examples] [Lab material] Part II: [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint][Examples] [Lab material] Part III: [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Examples] [Lab material] VBA ITIT (If There Is Time): [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Examples]	Chapter 2 (Chop Suey)
Computer security [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint]
Introduction to building a simple webpage (elective) [Notes: PDF] [Notes: PowerPoint] [Example web pages] [Extra resource: building a personal website using the UC webserver]

Graded components: Note all times are based on Calgary time (Mountain Standard Time). My-IT lab is based on Eastern Standard time (+2 hours) so due times are 1:59 AM (which is 11:59 PM in Calgary)

• Assignments and MY-IT lab covers hands-on topics such as Word, Excel and VBA programming. Exams will cover those things and more theoretical concepts.

Week	Evaluation component
Sept 2 - 8	(1 lecture this week)
Sept 9 - 15	(Regular term begins)
Sept 16 - 22	MY-IT lab: Word simulation exams for Chapter 1 & 2 closed off on Monday Sept 17 at 11:59 PM. Word My-IT lab simulation examinations that will be graded. Assignment 0 (D2L: submitting and checking assignment files) not graded will be closed off Friday Sept 21 at 4 PM
Sept 23 - 29
Sept 30, Oct 1 - 6	MY-IT lab: Word simulation exams for Chapter 3 & 4 closed off on Sunday Sept 30 at 11:59 PM Word My-IT lab simulation examinations that will be graded Assignment 1 (Word processing) is due: Monday Oct 1 at 4 PM Midterm #1: (In class: Wednesday Oct 3). Information link
Oct 7 - 13	MY-IT lab: Excel simulation exams for Excel Chapter 1 closed off on Sunday Oct 7 at 11:59 PM. List of Simulation Exams to be graded for this Chapter.
Oct 14 - 20	MY-IT lab: Excel simulation exams for Excel Chapter 2 (List of Simulation Exams to be graded for this Chapter) closed off on Sunday Oct 14 Sunday Oct 21 at 11:59 PM
Oct 21 - 27	MY-IT lab: Excel simulation exams for Excel Chapter 3 (List of Simulation Exams to be graded for this Chapter) & Excel Chapter 4closed off on Sunday Oct 21  at 11:59 PM
Oct 28 - Nov 3	MY-IT lab: Excel simulation exams for Excel Chapter 4 (List of Simulation Exams to be graded for this Chapter) & Excel Chapter 9 (List of Simulation Exams to be graded for this Chapter) closed off on Sunday Oct 28 at 11:59 PM Assignment 2 (Excel) is due: Monday Oct 29 at 4 PM Midterm #2: (In class: Wednesday Oct 31): Information link
Nov 4 - 10	Mini-A3a (VBA mini-programming assignment) is due Monday Nov 5 at 4 PM
Nov 11 - 17	Reading week: no lectures or CT
Nov 18 - 24	Mini-A3b (VBA mini-programming assignment) is due Friday Nov 23 at 4 PM
Nov 25 - Dec 1
Dec 2 - 8	Assignment 3 (VBA) is due: Friday Dec 7 at 4 PM
Dec 10 - 20	The final exam will be scheduled by the office of the Registrar during this period: Information link