ANNOUNCEMENTS

Course materials and the first assignment are available on Blackboard. You now have access to them.

Syllabus

DESCRIPTION

This is the first course of a two-semester sequence, two credits each semester. Successful completion of the sequence will fulfill the student's First-Year Seminar requirement. Course content during the first semester will focus on understanding various facets of Computer Science (CS) and how it relates to our lives. Students will be introduced to different concepts of CS, read and discuss articles, implement and present small projects. Students will become increasingly familiar with and experienced in scientific discourse, scientific methods and scientific communication.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

This Freshman Seminar Course, in the College of Science and Mathematics, is organized along a theme of inquiry-based learning for students and faculty. Each participant has a role in understanding topics that are prevalent in the scientific community along with developing new information that might form the basic science investments of the future. Students will be co-developers of this freshman seminar series that will be based primarily on inquiry-based science education. Desired outcomes will focus on students’ developing discovery skills, becoming self-driven learners, learning to work in groups, and being successful at the university. This course will maximize students’ potential for success in the university and the scientific community. Grading will be based on class participation, written papers, and projects.

GRADING

Participation: Attendance (10%), participation in class and Blackboard discussions (15%)

The instructor will assign various articles or videos each class period. Students are expected to read assigned articles, bring them to the following class (whether in digital or print format) and be ready to discuss them individually or in groups. The reflection should include the following: the student’s reaction to the content, quotations from the text that resonated with the student, questions raised by the content, and different potential views regarding the content. The participation grade will be calculated solely on the reflection answers if the student makes a good faith effort to participate in class. If they do not, points will be deducted from this daily grade as the instructor sees fit. Students who neither attend class nor explain their absences ahead of time will receive a 0 for that day’s grade. Students who explain absences ahead of time and submit their responses but do not attend the discussion can earn a maximum of 60 points unless the absence qualifies as a special case (at the discretion of the instructor)

Midterm Exam: Take-home analysis paper (30%)

The midterm exam will be a take-home paper between 3 and 5 pages long. This paper will provide in-depth analysis and synthesis of 2 or more news articles. At least one of the articles must be one that we discussed in class. This paper will be submitted on blackboard. It should be in Times New Roman font, with 1.25” margins, double-spaced.

Final Project: Individual website development (25%) + presentation of website (20%)

Students will design a website to showcase their academic and/or personal development. This may be achieved by HTML and CSS coding. The students may choose whether or not to host the site live on the internet; static files hosted locally are also acceptable.

Students will present their individual websites to the class. Students will sign up for presentation dates in the first half of the semester. Presentations are graded based on a rubric including technical elements and presentation style.

Late Submission Policy

Any unexcused work received past the due date will receive a deduction on the following scale:

• Less than 1 day late: 10 points

• More than 1 day late: 20 points * number of days.

So, an assignment with an original grade of 100 will receive 90 if it is submitted a few hours later than the deadline, 80 if it is submitted the next day (>24 hrs past deadline) until it receives no credit after the 5th day.

Academic Integrity and Cheating Policy

Any student submitting somebody else’s work as their own, or copying their own old work (whole or in part) to a new submission, will receive a grade of 0 for the assignment and potentially the entire course. In particularly drastic cases, plagiarism can lead to expulsion from the University. The instructor will not tolerate dishonesty and make no exceptions to this policy. Please protect yourself and the instructor from this unpleasant business by being honest and submitting only your own work. It is perfectly acceptable to cite and quote other authors, but you must clearly identify these parts as citations or quotes. If you do use quotes, you will be graded on your own synthesis, not on the quality of the work you are citing or quoting. Assignments with evidence of plagiarism cannot be resubmitted.

Students are required to adhere to the University Policy on Academic Standards and Cheating, to the University Statement on Plagiarism and the Documentation of Written Work, and to the Code of Student Conduct which is available online at: https://www.umb.edu/life_on_campus/policies/academics/academic_honesty

Disabilities

Section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 offers guidelines for curriculum modifications and adaptations for students with documented disabilities. If applicable, students may obtain adaptation recommendations from the Ross Center for Disability Services, M1401 (617-287-7430). The student must present these recommendations and discuss them with each professor within a reasonable period, preferably by the end of Drop/Add period.