Topic outline

  • Course Implementation

    Sessions and Online Implementation

    Kick-off lecture: On the 9th of September at 14:15 - 16:00 in T1. There are no exercise sessions on the first week (7th and 8th).

    Recorded lectures: Besides the kick-off lecture, all lectures will be recorded videos. The links to the videos will be shared in the beginning of the corresponding week. For questions related to the lectures and the corresponding exercises, we will create a Zulip channel where students can ask questions related to the week. 
    During the Friday sessions (T1 at 14:15 - 16:00) there is also a chance to ask questions related to the lecture videos.

    Types of sessions: see types of sessions.

    Types of exercises: There are three different types of exercises.

    1. Tutorial exercises: For each topic, we will have several tutorial exercises that help students to better understand the topic. They are not a prerequisite but are intended to support in solving the graded exercises and the programming exercises. These exercises are discussed weekly in the exercise sessions.
    2. Graded exercises: There are graded exercises, typically with a few sub-tasks.  In total, there are ten graded exercise sheets and each sheet  grants up to 10 points. These exercises can be found in and are submitted through the A+ system. The deadlines are roughly one week after the material for the corresponding topic is published  and we reserve two weeks for performing the grading. All submissions must be done in PDF form. We recommend using LaTeX. Handwritten solutions (in PDF) are accepted but in case we are unable to read your handwriting, we will grant 0 points. 
      One of the graded exercises per week is an individual exercise. The teaching staff will not assist with the individual exercises. You are allowed to discuss those with your peers as long as you follow the code of conduct.
    3. Programming exercises: There are 4 programming exercises, that can be found in and submitted through the A+ system. The programming language is C++. The exercises are automatically graded based on the correctness and efficiency of your solution. If you feel insecure about the C++ programming language, we point out that the course requires a minimal understanding of the details of the C++ language itself and asking for help is allowed (within the scope of the code of conduct).

    Late submissions:

    Late submissions, graded and programming exercises, will result in 0 points. 

    Communication through Zulip:
    To create an account in our Zulip chat, please follow this link. Just enter your aalto.fi email address, and follow the instructions. The Zulip space is created for convenient communication and is not required for completing the course. For help with Zulip, follow this link.

    We will have a separate channel for each lecture week and for each programming exercise. The corresponding channel will focus on the topic/exercise at hand. The channels act as a general forum for questions and answers, by either fellow students or the teaching staff. There are two special channels:
    #general: Is intended for any general discussion related to the course
    #queue: During the exercise sessions, you can request for 1-on-1 help here

    Each teaching assistant and the responsible teacher will have an account in Zulip. However, do not post direct messages to us, unless you have requested to do so, e.g., for 1-on-1 help during an exercise session. 

    Working on the exercises (and on this course)

    A big part of this course is to obtain individual skills in algorithm design, analysis, and implementation. Hence, everyone should write their solutions to all of the exercises themselves. Please see the Code of Conduct for this course for more details.

    The code is by no means intended to forbid working with your peers. On the contrary, we want to encourage working with other students and peer support. To make this explicit, we offer a small amount of extra points for each student that provided help to a peer in some exercise. This will not be controlled, we hope that it simply makes it explicit that helping others is not a bad thing. Just make sure to follow the code of conduct.

    Grading

    Your grade will consist of 3 parts.

    1. Graded homework: Each graded homework is worth 10 points, 90 points in total
    2. Programming Exercises: Each programming exercise is worth 10 points, 40 points in total. There is a warm-up programming exercise worth 3 points.
    3. Extra points: Answering each feedback, one per lecture, gives 1 point and exercise help gives 2, in total 11 points
    4. Total points: 144
    The specific grades are obtained as follows
    • Grade 5: At least 107 points
    • Grade 4: At least 97 points
    • Grade 3: At least 87 points
    • Grade 2: At least 77 points
    • Grade 1: At least 67 points



    Course Schedule


    Weekly timetable
      MondayTuesdayWednesday Thursday Friday 
    Lecture and exercises published 12:00    
    Graded exercise deadline  20:00    
    Exercise session14:15-16:0014:15-16:00No session
    Graded solutions session     14:15-16:00


    All deadlines are on Mondays at 20:00


    Overall Schedule
    Week 36
    5.9. - 9.9.

    Kick-off lecture Friday 9.9. 14:15
    No exercise this week!

    Week 37
    12.9. - 16.9.         		Lecture 1
    Tutorial session 1
    Deadline for programming warm-up (see A+)

    Week 38
    19.9. - 23.9.         		Lecture 2
    Tutorial session 2
    Deadline graded exercise 1

    Week 39
    26.9. - 30.9.    		Lecture 3
    Tutorial session 3
    Deadline graded exercise 2
    Deadline programming exercise 1

    Week 40
    3.10. - 7.10.         		Lecture 4
    Tutorial session 4
    Deadline graded exercise 3

    Week 41
    10.10. - 14.10.           		Lecture 5
    Tutorial session 5
    Deadline graded exercise 4
    Deadline programming exercise 2

    Week 42
    17.10. - 21.10.       		Evaluation week, nothing happening on this course


    Week 43
    24.10. - 28.10.           		Lecture 6
    Tutorial session 6
    Deadline graded exercise 5

    Week 44
    31.10. - 4.11.          		Lecture 7
    Tutorial session 7
    Deadline graded exercise 6


    Week 45
    7.11. - 11.11.   
    		No new lecture. More time for programming!
    No exercise.
    Deadline graded exercise 7
    Deadline programming exercise 3

    Week 46
    14.11. - 18.11.       		Lecture 8
    Tutorial session 8
    No graded deadline.

    Week 47
    21.11. - 25.11.         		Lecture 9
    Tutorial session 9
    Deadline graded exercise 8

    Week 48
    28.11. - 2.12.         		Deadline graded exercise 9
    Deadline programming exercise 4

    Week 49       
    5.12. - 9.12.    		Evaluation week, nothing left to do on this course



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Types of Sessions