Peter C. Chapin. Office: BLP-414 on the Williston campus. Office hours are by appointment. Phone: 802-879-2367 (voice mail active). Email: PChapin@vtc.vsc.edu. I will usually respond to email within 24 hours, not including weekends or holidays. Email is the best way to contact me. I am also sometimes on Skype under the ID pchapin, or on the FreeNode IRC network under the nickname pcc.
The official course outline lists high level course objectives and content.
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The text is my tutorial on C. Note that I may update sections of my tutorial as the course unfolds. The documents are dynamic.
I have created an email distribution list for the class. I will use this list to distribute announcements and other supplementary materials. Be sure to check your mail regularly (daily) or you might miss something important. If you send a question in email directly to me, I may reply to my distribution list if I think that others would benefit from my answer. If you would rather I did not reply to the list you should say so in your message.
My home page contains various documents of general interest. You will find my office hours posted there.
I grade on a point system. Each assignment is worth a certain number of points. At the end of the semester I total all the points you earned and compare that to the total number of possible points. In this course there are two components to your grade.
Homework. 10 pts/each. There will be approximately twelve assignments during the semester for a total of 120 points. You will have approximately one week to do each assignment. Most of these assignments will entail programming.
Exam. 50 pts. There will be one in-class exam. It will be given during the final exam period.
The exam will be closed book, closed notes. Also no calculators or other electronic devices are allowed.
I will not formally take attendance, but I will notice people who seem "disengaged" in the class. Although attendance is not specifically part of my grading policy it will, like other intangible items such as "professionalism," play a role in how likely I am to round up borderline grades.
Roughly, late submissions are not accepted. If something comes up that prevents you from handing in an assignment on time, contact me, before the deadline if at all possible, to discuss your issue. As a practical matter I can accept a late submission if I have neither distributed a solution nor graded the assignment. Since either of those things can happen at any time after the due date, you should plan on submitting all materials on time.
I encourage you to share ideas with your fellow students so I won't be shocked to learn that you've been talking with someone about an assignment. In fact if you worked closely with someone else you should make a note on your submission that mentions the names of your associates.
However, I do ask you to do your own work in your final submissions. If two submissions exhibit what I feel to be "excessive similarity" I will grade the submissions based on merit and then divide the grade by two, assigning half the grade to each submission. If I receive more than two excessively similar submissions I will divide the grade by the number of such submissions and distribute the result accordingly.
Since "excessive similarity" is a bit subjective, I may only give you a warning if the similarity is not too excessive—especially for a first offense. However, I will be much less inclined to be forgiving the second time. If you are concerned about the possibility of submitting something that might be too similar to another student's work, don't hesitate to speak with me first.
If you find material on the Internet or in a book that seems to answer questions I ask in an assignment, you may include such material in your submission provided you properly reference it. If I discover that you have included unreferenced material from such sources, I may not give you any credit for the question(s) answered by such material. You do not need to provide a reference to our text book or to materials I specifically provide in class.
Students with disabilities may request accommodation as provided within federal law. All such requests should be made by first contacting Robin Goodall, Learning Specialist, in the Center for Academic Success on the Randolph campus. She can be reached by phone at (802) 728-1278 or by email at rgoodall@vtc.edu.