UCSD CSE 12 Fall 2023

Basic Data Structures and Object-Oriented Design

Greg Miranda

This course focuses on two main topics: The basics of organizing data for efficient computation, and the design of programs that use collections, classes, and interfaces.

Each week, we will explore topics in these areas interactively during lectures. You will read beyond what we explore in lecture, complete programming assignments to hone your coding and program design skills, and take exams that test your understanding of what you’ve learned. After, you’ll be better at designing and understanding programs and the structure of data they work over.

This web page serves as the main source of announcements and resources for the course, as well as the syllabus.

On an average week in CSE12, you can expect to spend 4-6 hours on videos, reading, lecture, and discussion; 2-3 hours on programming practice; and 4-6 hours working on your programming projects. If you find yourself spending dramatically more time than this, it’s a good idea to contact the course staff and discuss more efficient strategies in office hours.

Course Components

There are a few components to your grade in the course:

• Course engagement activities (10%)
• Programming assignments (30%)
• Exams (60%)

Letter grades will be assigned based on the following grading scale:

We may adjust the above scale to be more lenient (depending on a number of factors that we will not publicize), but we guarantee that we will not adjust the scale to make it harder to get a better grade. We will not adjust the scale for individual students.

Lectures

Most course content will be presented asynchronously through videos and readings, with associated interactive activities which should be completed before lecture.

Lectures will involve problem solving with your classmates along with an opportunity to ask quesitons about the material. Participation is not required at problem-solving sections, but it is highly encouraged.

It is very important that students watch all pre-lecture videos as this is the primary way to learn the CSE 12 material.

In-person lectures will be led during the normally-scheduled lecture times in the normally-scheduled room, led by the instructor. These sessions will be recorded by podcasting but will not be available remotely while they are ongoing. You can find the recordings in the Canvas Media Gallery or at podcast.ucsd.edu

Since these lectures may be mostly student discussion, the recordings are mostly an archive of any live demos that come up rather than a presentation of core content. It can be helpful to watch the first few minutes of each lecture to see any annoucements. Not all annoucements are made on Piazza.

Discussion

In-person discussion will reinforce concepts from class and introduce concepts that are especially helpful for completing programming assignments. Discussions are also an opporunity to ask questions about the assignments as well as the course material. They will be recorded. Attendance is encouraged but optional.

Discussions will also be recorded by podcasting but will not be available remotely while they are ongoing. You can find the recordings in the Canvas Media Gallery or at podcast.ucsd.edu

Course Engagement

We highly recommend actively participating in class, attending discussion, and completing the weekly review quizzes. Regularly engaging with the class in these ways counts towards the Engagement component of your overall score.

This score is calculated on a weekly basis (starting in Week 1). The maximum number of points you can earn in one week is 6. The lowest weekly participation score will be dropped when calculating your overall engagement average.

Earn engagement points by:

• In class participation via worksheets In Weeks 1 through 10 (starting with the second lecture of the quarter), you will earn credit for attending and participating in lecture (3 points each) and discussion section (2 points). Worksheets will be graded for participation only and not for correctness of the response.

  To receive credit for attending lectures and discussion, you must make sure to check-in (check-ins will happen at random times in the middle of the lecture/discussion). The correct code for the lecture/discussion (given by the instructor/TA during lecture/discussion) must be used or credit will not be given for attending.

  Attendance check-ins will be handled through Gradescope therefore it’s highly recommended to download the Gradescope mobile app to your phone so you can upload your worksheets. Otherwise, you will need to hand-in your worksheets to the instructor/TA after lecture/discussion and come to office hours to get them back.

  If the file has not uploaded by the end of lecture/discussion, hand-in the worksheet before you or the instructor/TA leaves the room. We will not accept any worksheets once Gradescope closes (10 minutes after the lecture is scheduled to end) and the instructor/TA leaves the room and credit for attendance will not be given retroactively.

• Weekly Review quiz Online quizzes review the week’s material and preview some upcoming examples each week. You can submit your answers to each quiz as many times as you like. The latest submission before 8am on Monday will count towards your engagement score. Each weekly review quiz will be worth 6 points. The review quiz must be completed independently and individually. You may refer to your class notes and resources linked from this website, but not to other references. You may not share information about the review quiz with others, take the review quiz in someone else’s name, or ask anyone for prior knowledge about the review quiz.

We encourage you to find your preferred method for staying engaged with the course. There are lots of ways to earn full credit for a week’s engagement. For example: (1) attending all lectures; or (2) answering all questions on the review quiz correctly; or (3) attending one lecture, discussion section, and getting one answer correct on the review quiz; etc.

Stepik Exercises (Textbook)

Along with each lecture will come some optional pre-lecture work from our Stepik textbook.

The Stepik online texbook records your progress, and we give a schedule of expected times to finish the readings (i.e. they should be completed before the lecture in which they are assigned). There is no penalty for completing these late as they will not be graded, but they are assigned so that you will be prepared to participate in problem solving session and so that you know the expected pace of the course.

Programming Assignments (PAs)

Most weeks there will be a programming assignment. Direct practice with programming will make up the majority of your work in the course.

There are several opportunities to get feedback on your work and improve:

• Shortly after the deadline for each assignment, the autograded portion will automatically grade your submitted code and for the manually graded portion, a staff member will grade your work and get feedback on what, if anything, you need to fix.

• After you receive your grade you can continue to improve your assignment based on the feedback from grading. You can resubmit your work to the Late/Resubmit submission which will be open for two weeks (less for those assignemnts near the end of the quarter). Once the Late/Resubmit submission closes, your submission will again be graded.

There is no penalty for resubmissions, you can still earn full credit. We will take the highest score between your original submission and your late/resubmission.

The Late/Resubmit process also applies if your submission is late. You should strive to complete each PA before it’s posted deadline as the PAs are practice for the exams. You will also receive earlier feedback and an extra grading attempt if you submit before the original deadline.

For those assignments near the end of the quarter, the deadline for all late/resubmissions will be Friday of Week 10 at 8am. We will not accept any submissions after that time, for any reason.

Each student gets a free “slip day” for each programming assignment (PA) that allow an automatic 24-hour extension to submit the PA. You do not have to ask to use your slip day. Just submit your assignment after the deadline (but before 24 hours after the deadline) to automatically use your slip day. There is no penalty for using this free slip day.

It’s the student’s responsibilty to check that the autograder worked and that all files have been properly uploaded (by checking the Code tab). We only accept PAs through Gradescope before the slip-day deadline. We will not accept any files through email, Canvas, or Piazza.

Collaboration

This is not the same collaboration policy you have seen in your other programming courses. Read it carefully.

In your professional programming life, some of your work will be highly collaborative with lots of expert advice available from senior developers and from sites like StackOverflow. This is a common case in companies, in academia, and on open-source projects. It’s a great way to get exposed to new techniques, share knowledge, and generally enjoy teamwork. In contrast, some of your work will involve figuring out programming problems on your own, where you are the first person to encounter an issue, or the first person to try using a new library in the context of your application. You should get experience in both types of situations; we might call the former kind of problem open to collaboration and the latter closed to collaboration.

In terms of courses, this split also makes sense. Programming assignments serve (at least) two roles. First and foremost, they are a mechanism for you to learn! By directly applying the techniques and skills we discuss in class, you get practice and become a better programmer. Second, they are an assessment mechanism – as instructional staff we use them to evaluate your understanding of concepts as demonstrated by your programs. Open collaboration can reduce frustration while learning and give you chances to enjoy collaboration and lots of help, but may not let us accurately evaluate your understanding. Closed assignments are an opportunity for you to demonstrate what you know by way of programming.

There are two types of assignments in this course, open and closed:

• Open assignments, for which you can talk to anyone else in the course, post snippets of code on Piazza, get lots of help from TAs, and generally come up with solutions collaboratively. TAs will be happy to look at your code and suggest approaches and fixes.

  There are a few restrictions:

  • Any code that you didn’t write must be cited in the comments at the top of all of your submitted code files.

    Example: On an open assignment, you and another student chat online about the solution, you figure out a particular helper method together. Your comment should say “//The FOO function was developed in collaboration with Firstname Lastname”

    Example: On an open assignment, a student posts the recursive method calls they used to solve a problem you were struggling with. Your comment should say “//I used the code from https://piazza.com/class/id-of-post”.

    Example: You and another student sit next to each other, and point out mistakes and errors to one another as you work through the assignment. As a result, your solutions are substantially similar. Your comment should say “//I collaborated with Firstname Lastname to develop my solution.”

  • You cannot share an entire repository of code or paste an entire solution into Piazza. Keep snippets to reasonable, descriptive chunks of code; think a dozen lines or so to get the point across.
  • You still cannot use code that you find online (no copying code from StackOverflow or blogs online), or get assistance or code from students outside of this offering of the class. All the code that is handed in should be developed by you or someone in the class.
  • You are responsible for understanding all the code you have written. All of the programming problems on the PAs may show up on exams, where you will need to have a thorough understanding of the PA to answer the questions.

  This doesn’t mean the staff will be handing out answers. We’ll mostly respond with leading questions and advice, and you shouldn’t expect a direct answer to questions like “am I done?” or “is my code right?”

  There is no guarantee the assistance you get from your classmates is correct. It is your responsibility to use your judgment to avoid using an idea on Piazza that is wrong, or doesn’t work with your solution; we won’t necessarily tell you one way or another while the assignment is out.

  If we see that you used code from other students and didn’t cite it at the top of your file, the penalty will range from a point deduction to an academic integrity violation, depending on the severity. Always cite your work!

  Note: collaboration does not mean turning in the same file. Collaboration is different than partners or pair programming. You must still do your own work.

• Closed assignments, where you cannot collaborate with others. The closed assignments this quarter are the programming assessments (exams). You cannot ask clarification questions but you can report potential issues as private posts on Piazza or to staff members. Staff will not look at your code or comment on it. There will no Lab/office hours during closed exams. These programming assesments are take-home exams.

  On closed assignments/assessments:

  • You cannot look at or use anyone else’s code in any way.
  • You cannot discuss the assignment, even in general terms, with anyone.
  • You should expect that staff members will politely say “The course policy says I can’t help with that” if you ask a question about your algorithm or code.
  • You cannot post publicly about the assignment on Piazza or elsewhere online.
  • All of the examples in the open section above would be academic integrity violations.

Programming assignments will explicitly list whether they are open or closed collaboration.

You should be familiar with the UCSD guidelines on academic integrity as well.

Do not post your PA solutions publicly on any site, including Github. If you fork the Github starter code repos and upload your code to the repo, you are required to make the repo private. It is an academic integrity violation to publicly post your code. This remains true even after the course is over. If you with to share the code wish an employer in the future, upload the code to Google Drive or Dropbox and share the link to the folder.

Exams

There will be three in-class exams during the quarter, held during the scheduled lecture time:

• Week 4 - Wednesday 10/25/2023
• Week 7 - Wednesday 11/15/2023
• Week 10 - Wednesday 12/6/2023

The final exam will be:

• Week 11 - Monday 12/11/2023, 8am - 11am, room will be announced in Week 10.

Seats will be assigned for all exam sessions and announced beforehand, and you must bring your school ID to the exam. All work on exams is to be done on your own, and you are not allowed to use any electronics or study aids during the exam (aside from those needed for University-approved academic accommodations). You may not speak to any other student in the exam room while the exam is in progress (including after you hand in your own exam). You may not share any information about the exam with any student who has not yet taken it (including students in future quarters of CSE12).

Each in-class exam will each be worth 20% of your final grade. The final exam will be broken into three parts, each corresponding to the material from one of the in-class exams. Your grade for each in-class exam will be the maximum of the in-class score and the score on the corresponding part of the final exam. Note: each part of the final exam is optional if you wish to only use the score of in-class exam for that part.

For example:

• On the three in-class exams you score 75, 0, and 95 (you miss the second). On the final exam you score 80, 75, and 0 on the three parts. Your exam scores are 80, 75, 95, giving you an exam grade of 50% (16% + 15% + 19%).
• On the three in-class exams you score 95, 93, and 90. You skip the final so your scores are 0, 0, 0. Your exam scores are 95, 93, 90, giving you an exam grade of 55.6% (19% + 18.6% + 18%).
• On the three in-class exams you score 75, 55, and 60. On the final you score 95, 90, 94. Your exam scores are 95, 90, 94, giving you an exam grade of 55.8% (19% + 18% + 18.8%).

This policy also covers what happens if you miss an in-class exam for any reason. If you are absent for an in-class exam, you get a 0, and then whatever score you get on the final exam for that section will be applied to your exam grade. There are no make-up in-class exams, and the final exam policy is governed by the university’s policies.

Policies

Academic Integrity

Individual assignments will describe their academic integrity requirements. You should pay attention to the descriptions of what collaboration is allowed and expected on each assignment.

One challenge we face as an instructional team is verifying that students are submitting their own work given the number of remote and asynchronous options we provide. In the past, we relied on in-person, ID-checked exams to mitigate this particular challenge to academic integrity. Assignments and exams will come with specific policies for what types of collaboration is allowed, but we have one course-wide policy – we may reach out to students to schedule a check-in on their understanding of work they’ve submitted if we’re suspicious about an academic integrity violation. This would involve a video conference with a TA or instructor to check that the student has the understanding demonstrated by their work. This is in addition to any video screencasts that are submitted as a part of the exam.

We don’t expect to use this option much (certainly you are a student that acts with integrity!), but we state it clearly in the syllabus in case it becomes necessary so it isn’t a surprise to anyone.

You should be familiar with the UCSD guidelines on academic integrity as well.

Regrades

Mistakes sometimes occur in grading. Once grades are posted for an assignment, we will allow a short period for you to request a fix (announced along with grade release). If you don’t make a request in the given period, the grade you were initially given is final.

Diversity and Inclusion

We are committed to fostering a learning environment for this course that supports a diversity of thoughts, perspectives and experiences, and respects your identities (including race, ethnicity, heritage, gender, sex, class, sexuality, religion, ability, age, educational background, etc.). Our goal is to create a diverse and inclusive learning environment where all students feel comfortable and can thrive.

Our instructional staff will make a concerted effort to be welcoming and inclusive to the wide diversity of students in this course. If there is a way we can make you feel more included please let one of the course staff know, either in person, via email/discussion board, or even in a note under the door. Our learning about diverse perspectives and identities is an ongoing process, and we welcome your perspectives and input.

We also expect that you, as a student in this course, will honor and respect your classmates, abiding by the [UCSD Principles of Community] (https://ucsd.edu/about/principles.html){:target=”_blank”}. Please understand that others’ backgrounds, perspectives and experiences may be different than your own, and help us to build an environment where everyone is respected and feels comfortable.

If you experience any sort of harassment or discrimination, please contact the instructor as soon as possible. If you prefer to speak with someone outside of the course, please contact the Office of Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination: https://ophd.ucsd.edu/.