CIS/Policies

From MCIS Wiki

Conduct

• Absences must be excused in advance
• You must pay attention to the speaker
• Be involved in the discussion
• Turn off cell phones, please

Communication Skills

Communication, both written and oral, is an essential part of this class. This course will help you to write and speak clearly on technical issues. Our class will be posting information on the Internet and on the bulletin board in Hurst. Basic skills in Powerpoint are needed for your presentations. Grammar and spelling are important!

Politics

Some of the issues we will cover are very political. There are no "right" answers to many questions we will discuss. All points of view are welcome but prepare to defend your arguments intelligently.

Preparation

Every student is required to attend class and is responsible for assigned readings. Classroom participation is manditory - students that come to class unprepared will be graded down. Every class will have background reading assigned. If you come to class without doing the reading you'll be in trouble. As there are no computers in class, you can't try to sneak in your reading at the last minute. I don't reccomend that you bring printouts - it's better to take notes by hand.

See my notes for tips on dealing with the reading assignments.

Teams

Every student will be on a homework team containing 2 or 3 students. The team is jointly responsible for some homeworks.

Weekly Quizzes

There will be a weekly quiz of 10 minutes. These will be at the end of class on Thursdays. There will also be a final at the end of class. The two lowest quiz scores will be dropped.

Presentations

Everyone is required to make four presentations to the class:

• An individual presentation of 15 minutes of a Slashdot news item
• A team presentation of an application area in computing. This will be a detailed presentation of about 25 minutes.
• A team presentation on a lecture topic. This will be 25 minutes.
• An individual presentation on the topic of your term paper on the last week of class.

See my notes on presentations for more details.

Presentation Format

Every Thursday we will have a current event presentation of about 30 minutes. When no homework team is scheduled, the instructor will lead the presentation. You will ALWAYS be responsible for reading the article the presentation is based on in advance. All topics must be cleared by the instructor in advance. Presentation material must be in the wiki at least 2 days in advance.

Term Papers

Every student is required to do a term paper. This is individual work, not a team project. A short presentation (3 - 4 minutes) will be included in the project. WARNING: Wholesale copying or any significant passage of uncited text will result in a 0 on your paper.

Grading

Your grade consists of the following:

• Term Paper (25%)
• Preparation (25%) - lowest 2 dropped
• Tests (25%) - lowest 2 quizzes dropped, this is the average of the quiz grade and the final.
• Homework (25%)