The University of Michigan, Fall 2021
This course covers practical programming in Java. The following is a tentative list of topics: Java syntax, expressions and statements, control flow, objects and types, inheritance, polymorphism, arrays, exceptions, interfaces, nested and local classes, generics, input and output, graphical user interfaces, threads, and mobile programming. This list is subject to change.
| Kristopher Smith <krjgsmth@umich.edu> |
| Rithika Ganesh <rithikag@umich.edu> |
| William Wang <wiljwang@umich.edu> |
Our current expectation is that EECS 285 will primarily be in person this semester. However, we will support remote participation to the extent possible.
All dates and times in this course are with respect to Ann Arbor (Eastern) time.
Lectures are offered live in person, and recordings will be made available. We do not take attendance in lecture.
Projects will be turned in electronically to the course's Autograder.
Quizzes will be conducted electronically on Canvas. Refer to the course schedule for quiz dates and times.
Office hours will be held in both in-person and remote formats.
These expectations are subject to change, depending on university and college policies and the state of the pandemic throughout the semester.
Make sure you have a laptop consistent with CAEN recommendations.
Test your internet connection with the U-M Custom Speedtest website and make sure it meets the minimum requirements for any UM service. You'll need more bandwidth if there will be multiple simultaneous users in your household.
Resources for help with computing equipment:
Passing EECS 280 are all you need to be prepared for this course. You do not need to have any experience in Java.
We do not have a required or recommended textbook. Use any textbook you like, or use web resources in addition to lecture material. UM students get free access to O'Reilly Safari Books and you can find several Java textbooks there.
The course website links to all course resources. Please check the website regularly for updates.
We use Piazza as a collaborative discussion forum for the course, and it is the best place for technical questions, assignment updates, and policy questions. Please do not publicly post your solution; if you have a specific question about your solution, please make a private post instead. Please search the forum before posting; duplicate questions create extra work for everyone, and they make it harder for others to find answers to their questions.
eecs285staff@umich.edu reaches the full course staff.
Please reach out to krjgsmth@umich.edu for confidential matters.
We publish important announcements and grades on Canvas. Please ensure that you can receive Canvas announcements.
There will be several quizzes throughout the semester. These will be taken online via Canvas. A minimum of one quiz grade will be dropped during final grade computation. Quiz weeks are on the course website.
We will work with you if you have SSD accommodations.
We will post forms for SSD accommodations in the first few weeks of the semester. To ensure that we can accommodate requests, we will announce a deadline for submitting the forms.
Over the course of the semester, we will assign four programming projects. The first is a short project intended to give you some familiarity with Java. The latter three projects are more substantial Java programs, requiring you to design, implement, and test a solution.
We will post a Canvas announcement in the case of any critical corrections or clarifications. It is your responsibility to ensure you are able to receive Canvas announcements.
All assignments in this course will use the Java 8 programming language. You are free to develop your programs on any platform you like, but you may use only standard features in Java 8. You will need to install the Java Development Kit for your platform. We also recommend using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for writing your code. We recommend the IntelliJ Idea Community IDE.
Later projects may use Android Studio instead. More information will be forthcoming when those projects are released.
Programming assignments must be submitted to the course autograder. We do not accept submissions over Canvas or email.
We use a web-based autograder for project submissions. We provide 2 submissions a day per student with feedback; partnerships will receive 4 submissions with feedback per day. After you have exhausted your submissions with feedback for a particular day, you may submit any number of times, but you will not receive any feedback for those submissions.
For Projects 1 and 2, the feedback you receive will be which autograder tests passed and which ones failed. The autograder will show full output for the first test that fails, but every other test will just show pass or fail. The autograder tests are not intended to be a substitute for testing and debugging on your own, which is why we limit feedback.
Projects 3 and 4 are expected to have a significant user-interface component, which would be very difficult to grade automatically. As such, the only feedback we expect to be able to give you on the autograder is whether or not your code compiled.
We will grade your last submission for a project. It is your responsibility to ensure that your last submission is complete and working. We suggest downloading your files after making your final submission and rerunning your tests to make sure that you submitted what you intended. Under no circumstances will we grade any submission other than your final one.
Several of the projects will also be graded for good programming practices, both by hand and using automated tools. Specifically, programming style (always), design (when applicable), and test cases will be considered during grading. In addition, other factors may be considered as well – for example, while we are not typically focused on efficiency in this course, a deduction can be applied if your code is overly complex or inefficient to the point of being a bad design.
You should always use good programming practices; do not wait until the last minute to "fix your style," as this will likely lead to your code breaking.
A program is correct if it behaves as specified in the project handout, for example, by generating the correct output. A program adheres to course principles when it uses techniques taught in lecture and asked for in the specification. Finally, a program should be readable by other programmers. We recommend adhering to common style guidelines, such as Google's style guide for Java. We require that you adhere to the style and programming guidelines on the course website.
We have found through many years of teaching experience in various courses that the most common reason for poor project performance is not starting early enough. Plan to do some work on the project every day and try to have it finished a few days ahead of the due date, because many unexpected problems arise during testing. In addition, the computing sites can become very crowded, making it difficult to get a computer to use, so plan for these things to happen.
The second most common reason for not doing well on the projects is not asking for help when you need it. We offer help in office hours and on the class forums. When you come to office hours, please be ready to provide access to your code, preferably electronic. Another good way to get help is to post a question to the course forum. Remember, if you find that you are stuck on a piece of your project for an undue amount of time, please see us!
An important skill in programming is to be able to test and debug your programs independently. As such, we will not debug your programs for you. Instead, we will help you try to figure out how to test and debug your program yourself. We will also ask you to demonstrate what testing and debugging techniques you have already tried, and what the results were, before providing any advice.
We expect you to turn in your projects by the due date and time (generally 8pm on the day of the deadline), and we do not generally offer extensions. For example, we do not offer extensions due to crowded computing sites, long queue times or slow response times on the autograder, internet access problems, accidental erasure or loss of files, or outside conflicting commitments.
However, we recognize that unexpected events such as the above do happen. To account for them, we will allow each student a total of 3 late days to be used on any project during the semester. That is 3 days total for the semester, not per project. These late days should only be used to deal with unexpected problems such as illness. They should not be used simply to start later on a project or because you are having difficulty completing the project. Once your late days are used up, we will not accept submissions past the deadline.
A late day is 24 hours. This means that if the deadline for a project is 8pm, one late day gives you until 8pm the day after the deadline. Submitting past 8pm on the day after the deadline consumes two late days.
Submissions made by a partnership after the deadline use up late days from both partners. It is your responsibility to ensure that you and your partner agree on whether or not to use a late day. In the case that one partner has a late day remaining while the other doesn't, a late submission will only count for the partner who has a late day. For the partner who does not have a late day, we will use the last submission made in the time period they were allowed to submit.
In addition to the standard three late days, we consider accommodations for the following reasons:
For Projects 2 - 4, if your last submission is 2 days (or more) before the due date, you will receive bonus points calculated at 5% of your overall score for the project (including both autograder tests and hand grading). If your last submission is between 2 days and 1 day before the due date, you will receive bonus points calculated at 2.5% of your overall score for the project. For purposes of early submission, we use 11:59pm as the cutoff for each day. That is, if your last submission is by 11:59pm on Wednesday you will earn 5% bonus points for a project due on Friday two days later. If your last submission is by 11:59pm on Thursday, you will earn 2.5% bonus points.
Since submissions made by a partnership count for both partners, be sure to coordinate with your partner on whether or not to submit after the deadlines for early submission.
You may give or receive help on any of the concepts covered in lecture or reading assignments. You are allowed to consult with other students in the class to help you understand the assignment specification (the definition of the problem).
You must complete Project 1 alone. You may complete Projects 2 - 4 either alone or with a partner. For those retaking the course: if you submitted a project in a previous term, you may not partner on that same project this term. All programming assignments in this course are to be done by you or your partnership.
You may not collaborate in any way with people outside your partnership when constructing your solution; your partnership working alone must generate the solution to a programming assignment and must submit your code for grading together (i.e. your partnership may only submit one version of your code for grading). You are not allowed to work out the programming details of the problems with anyone outside your own partnership or to collaborate to the extent that your programs are identifiably similar. You may not derive your solution in any way from other solutions. (If you are retaking the course, you may reuse your own code.) You may not share code, including making it publicly available in any form (e.g. a public GitHub repository), whether during or after the semester. You may not share test cases outside of your partnership as we consider your test cases part of your solution. If you have any questions as to what constitutes unacceptable collaboration, please talk to the instructor right away. You are expected to exercise reasonable precautions in protecting your own work. Do not let other students borrow your account or computer. Ensure that the computers you use to access project code are password protected. Do not leave your program in a publicly accessible directory, neither during the semester, nor after. Take care when discarding printouts. You are still responsible for following these rules even after finishing the course.
We report suspected violations to the Engineering Honor Council. To identify violations, we use both manual inspection and automated software to compare present solutions with each other and with prior solutions. The Honor Council determines whether a violation of academic standards has occurred, as well as any sanctions. Read the Honor Code for detailed definitions of cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic misconduct.
Working in a partnership is optional. For Projects 2 - 4, you may work either alone or in a partnership. The following rules apply to those who choose to work in a partnership.
You and your partner must collaborate on all aspects of your solution. You may not split up the project and work on separate parts individually. Both partners will be held equally responsible for anything submitted on behalf of the partnership.
DOs
DON'Ts
Your final grade is based on scores from programming projects and quizzes. The tentative point distribution is included in the following table. It is not likely that this will change, but circumstances might occur that would make changes necessary, at the discretion of the instructor.
| Assignment | Weight |
|---|---|
| Project 1 | 10% |
| Project 2 | 20% |
| Project 3 | 25% |
| Project 4 | 25% |
| Quizzes | 20% |
| Total | 100% |
There are no letter grades for individual projects or exams. The final course letter grade is based on the total weighted score earned. Please note, we do not offer the opportunity for “make-up” or extra credit work to improve your grade.
We expect to assign final grades as follows:
However, if this seems unreasonable at the end of the course, the scale may be adjusted in favor of the student. Under no circumstances will the scale be adjusted such that the “curve” is detrimental to the student’s final grade.
We do not round scores to the closest percentage when assigning grades.
While we work hard to grade accurately, we sometimes make mistakes. If you believe we graded an assignment of yours incorrectly, you can submit a regrade request no later than one week after the graded work is originally returned. We will then regrade your entire assignment, which can cause your grade can go up, but it can also go down. Regrade requests should only be made if you feel a grading error occurred - not if you are unsatisfied with the grading criteria. For projects, we only allow regrade requests on the hand-graded portion -- we do not regrade autograder tests.
Please refer to course announcements for the regrade procedure and deadline for individual assignments and exams.
You will maximize your grade, and learn a lot at the same time, if you:
We encourage you to attend remote lectures synchronously if possible. When participating in remote lecture or office hours, please keep yourself muted unless you are actively talking to the other participants, so as to avoid background noise that can be distracting.
We may record course lectures and make them available to other students to facilitate their participation in this course. If you do not wish to be recorded, you can keep yourself muted during class sessions. We also record chat transcripts and make them available to students in the course. If you would like to ask a question in chat but do not want it in the recording, you can send a private chat message to the instructor, which will not show up in the recording.
Students may not record or distribute any class activity without written permission from the instructor, except as necessary as part of approved accommodations for students with disabilities. Any approved recordings may only be used for the student’s own private use.
If you think you need an accommodation for a disability, please let us know during the first three weeks of the semester. Some aspects of this course may be modified to facilitate your participation and progress. As soon as you make us aware of your needs, we can work with the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) office to help us determine appropriate academic accommodations. SSD (734-763-3000; http://ssd.umich.edu) typically recommends accommodations through a Verified Individualized Services and Accommodations (VISA) form. Any information you provide is private and confidential and will be treated as such.
As indicated in the General Standards of Conduct for Engineering Students, we are committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status. Please feel free to contact us with any problem, concern, or suggestion. We ask that all of us treat each other with respect.
We all experience stressors that can impact both our academic experience and our personal well-being. These may include academic pressure and challenges associated with relationships, mental health, alcohol or other drugs, identities, finances, etc.
If you are experiencing concerns, seeking help is a courageous thing to do for yourself and those who care about you. If the source of your stressors is academic, please contact us so that we can find solutions together. For personal concerns, U-M offers many resources, some of which are listed at Resources for Student Well-being on the Well-being for U-M Students website. You can also search for additional resources on that website.
We are always working hard to improve the course, our teaching methods, and the curriculum as a whole. Often, this requires using your class work for research purposes. However, we will not publish any identifying information about you or your work. For example, we may use anonymized student assignments to design algorithms or build tools to help programmers. Or we might survey responses to help us improve the course and better understand instructional techniques. If you wish to opt out, contact the course staff (eecs285staff@umich.edu) at any time up to seven days after final grades have been issued. Opting out has no impact on your grade in any manner.
While we try to do our best to plan ahead, unfortunately, sometimes circumstances do arise that motivate a policy change. When this happens, the change will be announced, and this document will be updated with the new policy.
We wish you the best of luck this semester! We will do our best to make it a positive and meaningful experience, and we hope that the course helps you in your future endeavors.