Topic outline

  • Taking the course

    Material

    There are no lectures in this Autumn 2020 instance of the course.

    The course material consists of:

    Online exercises

    In order to pass the course, one must obtain certain amount of points in the online execises of the course. These obligatory online exercises are provided in the A+ system at https://plus.cs.aalto.fi/CS-A1140/2020/. There are exercises from three categories,
    • quizzes and visual exercises (no programming),
    • programming assignments, and
    • feedback.
    The points from all these three categories are summed together and the maximum amount of points available will be at least 4500.

    The main online exercises are divided in ten rounds and each round has two deadlines:

    • Full points deadline: completing an exercise correctly before this deadline provides full points for the exercise.
    • Late submission deadline is after the full points deadline but before the course instance ends in December. Only 70 percent of the full points will be awarded for correct solutions submitted after the full points deadline but before the late submission deadline of the round.
    Submitting solutions after the late submission deadline is not possible. The deadline dates and times are shown in the A+ system.

    In addition, there is an extra assignments round that contains some amount of voluntary assignments on various topics. These are not the easiest assignments in the course.

    Validity of the exercise points and personal extensions:

    • The exercise points obtained during Autumn 2020 are only valid during this course instance.
    • The exercise points from the previous course instance(s) are not valid anymore.
    • Personalized arrangements, including deadline extensions etc, can only be considered on the basis of non-short-term medical reasons (a certificate will be required), please contact the responsible teacher in such a case.

    The online exercises are personal assignments and thus, for instance, producing code together, copying code from others, and making one's own solutions available to others (either privately or by posting to some shared or public forum) is not allowed. Discussing general algorithmic concepts and techniques with fellow students is of course allowed, even encouraged, as long as the level of details is abstract enough so that the submitted program codes of the participating students do not start to look similar. If you help somebody, help him/her to understand the topic, not just how to pass the assignment and get the points.

    Grading

    The grade of the online exercises, and the whole course, will be determined by the following point limits:
    • grade 0 (failed): 0 - 999 points
    • grade 1: 1000 - 1674 points
    • grade 2: 1675 - 2349 points
    • grade 3: 2350 - 3024 points
    • grade 4: 3025 - 3699 points
    • grade 5: 3700 or more points

    Voluntary online exercise sessions

    In case you need help with the assignments, you can visit a voluntary exercise session or post a question in our discussion forum. Due to the corona virus situation, the exercise sessions will be online only. The weekly exercise session schedule is:
    • Tuesdays 10:00-12:00 by Iiris and Letizia
    • Tuesdays 12:00-14:00 by Anders and Matias
    • Tuesdays 14:00-16:00 by Anton and Taige
    • Tuesdays 16:00-18:00 by Iiris and Rune
    • Wednesdays 10:00-12:00 by Akseli and Alena
    • Wednesdays 12:00-14:00 by Khoa and Sampo
    • Wednesdays 14:00-16:00 by Alena, Jere and Taige
    • Wednesdays 16:00-18:00 by Anders and Ella
    • Thursdays 10:00-12:00 by Akseli and Khoa
    • Thursdays 12:00-14:00 by Matias, Niilo, and Sampo
    • Thursdays 14:00-16:00 by Ella, Jere and Rune
    • Thursdays 16:00-18:00 by Anton, Letizia and Niilo
    To encourage you to start working earlier than the deadline day, there are no sessions on Fridays; consider attending the sessions on Tuesdays and Wednesday mornings whenever possible.
    The exercise sessions are organized between September 8th and November 26th. Exceptions:
    • No exercise sessions from October 19th to October 23th due to the evaluation week. Naturally, you can continue solving and submitting the online exercises during this period as well if you wish, but there will be no exercise sessions or deadlines then.
    The assistants in the exercise sessions are mainly focusing on the rounds as follows (of course, you can ask about other rounds as well).
    • Week 37: round 1
    • Week 38: rounds 1 and 2
    • Week 39: rounds 2 and 3
    • Week 40: rounds 3 and 4
    • Week 41: rounds 4 and 5
    • Week 42: rounds 5 and 6
    • Week 43: No exercise sessions (evaluation week)
    • Week 44: rounds 6 and 7
    • Week 45: rounds 7 and 8
    • Week 46: rounds 8 and 9
    • Week 47: rounds 9 and 10
    • Week 48: round 10

    Attending exercise sessions

    As in some other CS courses at Aalto, the voluntary online exercise sessions and the discussion forum are implemented with a chat workspace and Zoom. Please read these instructions for the details.