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California State University Stanislaus

CS 3740: Computer Organization

Fall 2020

Tu Thu 3:30 - 4:45 pm, Zoom and other software

Instructor: Dr. Megan Thomas

Syllabus Sections

Online Fall 2020 Information

Basic Information

Textbook (required) is The Essentials of Computer Organization and Architecture, Fifth Edition, by Null and Lobur.

Best way to contact Dr. Thomas:  Email mthomas@cs.csustan.edu

Important: put "CS3740" in the subject line of every email. Email without the "CS3740" might be automatically deleted by my spam filters. Remember to sign your emails. You may know exactly who thingabuzzycooltoy@random_domain.com is, but I do not.

Grading

Grades will be based exams and multiple homework assignments.  A plus and minus grading scale will be used to assign final grades.

To pass this class, a student must take every exam (quizzes, final), with one exception (noted below). Students must also satisfactorily complete the homework assignments.

Students who do not satisfy the requirements in the above paragraph will receive an F or NC.

At the end of the semester, the lowest quiz score will be dropped, and not included when calculating course grades. (The final exam is not a quiz.)

The final grade weighting of student work is estimated in the table below.  The final weights should be close to those in the table, but circumstances may arise during the semester that force reweighting.  (For example, if one of the midterms proves unusually difficult, the instructor may reduce the weight of that midterm and weight the other exams higher.)

CR/NC grading may be requested only by filing a form in MSR by the appropriate deadline. See the Enrollment Services web page for more information about deadlines.

Quizzes and Final
45%
Homeworks
45%
Class Participation, etc
10%

100%

Academic Integrity

The work you do for this course will be completed individually, and must be your own work. You are not to submit other people's work and represent it as your own.

You may discuss general ideas about how to approach an assignment, but never specific details about the code to write. Any help you receive from or provide to classmates should be limited and should never involve details of how to write code.

You may not show another student your solution to an assignment, nor look at his/her solution.

You may not have any another person "walk you through" an assignment, describe in detail about how to solve it, or sit with you as you write it. You also may not provide such help to another student. (The only exceptions to this ban are the course instructor and the CS lab system administrator.)

Under this policy, a student who gives inappropriate help is equally guilty with the student who receives it. Instead of providing such help to a student who does not understand the assignment, point them to course resources such as the lecture notes, the textbook, or the instructor.

You must also take reasonable steps to ensure that your work is not copied. Make sure to log out of shared computers, do not email your code to other students or post your code on the web, and do not leave printouts of your code in public places.

Students who violate this policy will receive no credit on the assignment, and a report will be sent to the university Office of Judicial Affairs.

(Credit for some of the phrasing of this academic integrity policy is due to Marty Stepp.)

Late Days

Each student gets an automatic extension of 4 calendar days. You can use the extension on any assignment(s) remaining during the semester (in increments that are rounded up to the nearest integer). For instance, you can hand in one assignment 4 days late, or each of four assignments 1 day late. When you hand in a late assignment, you must identify in the comments in the head of the source code the following: (i) how late this assignment is, and (ii) how much of the total slip time you have left. No assignment will be accepted more then 4 days late. After you have used up your slip time, any assignment handed in late will be marked off 25% per day. There will be no extensions granted.

Tips for submitting programming assignments

You have one week after the grades for an assignment are given out to request regrading. You must give a good reason for the regrade request, and you should be aware that the assignment will be regraded from scratch. You may gain points... or lose them.

Audio / Video Recordings

Video recordings of class meetings will be made available by the instructor, as links. Be aware that, while Zoom will attempt to automatically caption the lectures, homonyms confuse the software that creates the captions.

The recordings are only for use of students in Fall 2020 CS 3740, and should not be shared with anyone outside the class.

Resources

Available at the CSU Stanislaus library:

WWW Pages: