A major part of all software engineering projects is being able to report accurately and on time.  For all your assignments, and for your professional life in the future, you are encouraged to

• set your personal deadline earlier than the actual one
• keep backups of all your important files
• make sure that no-one else picks up your printouts or has access to your files

Late work will not be accepted. Develop good working habits and manage your time well. If your contributions are seriously affected by illness or misadventure do your utmost to contact the lecturer before the due date.  If the severity of the disruption warrants it, you should consider applying for special consideration.

If you receive special consideration for the final exam, a supplementary exam will be scheduled in the week of December 17-21 2018. By making a special consideration application for the final exam you are declaring yourself available for a resit during the supplementary examination period and will not be eligible for a second special consideration approval based on pre-existing commitments. Please ensure you are familiar with the policy prior to submitting an application. Approved applicants will receive an individual notification one week prior to the exam with the exact date and time of their supplementary examination.

Finally a remark about hurdle assessments:

Students are required to perform satisfactorily to meet the hurdle requirement.  If a student makes a serious attempt, but fails to meet the hurdle requirement for a particular item of assessment, then he or she will be offered one further opportunity to meet the hurdle requirement.  In this unit we expect students to reach a pass level (50%) in these assessment items, but, recognising that they are designed as an aid to learning (they are formative), the hurdle requirement will be merely 40%.  Students obtaining between 30% and 40% on an assessment item will be given a further assessment task to allow them another opportunity to demonstrate the performance required to meet the hurdle.

In other words, in this unit we are define 'satisfactory' as at least 40%, and 'serious attempt' as at least 30%.

Location

COMP255 is taught via lectures on Monday from noon to 2pm in Mason Theatre (formerly E7BT1), and on Tuesday from 9am to 10am in 29WWT1 (formerly X5BT1). Workshops (mixed classes) are two hours long and take place in various locations generally on level 1 of 9WW (formerly E6A) at a time assigned to each student individually.

Textbook

There is no textbook for COMP255.  The unit content will be presented in lectures and practical classes.  There will also be some assigned readings, and there are many books that can be consulted for reference material.

Lecture Recordings

Digital recordings of parts of lectures are expected to be available. Note that some of the lecture activities are interactive, and because there is no video recording it is unlikely that you will be able to understand what is happening if you were not present for the original lecture.  In addition, some confidential case-studies will be presented in lectures but will not be recorded.

If you miss a lecture you should obtain a copy of the lecture notes from another student, find out whatever else you can about the lecture to catch up, think carefully about the material, and then talk to the lecturer at the next lecture to discuss anything that is still unclear.

Website

Extra course materials, some online discussions, and the submission of assessable work, will be carried out via iLearn.

The unit will make use of discussion boards hosted within iLearn.  Feel free to post questions there -- the discussion boards will be monitored by the staff teaching the unit. Everyone is encouraged to engage with the discussion and provide questions and/or answers.  Such discussions will generally be about the material treated in comp255, but other aspects of Software Engineering may be discussed too.  We are a "community of interest" and we are here to learn about software engineering (including the software engineering taught in comp255, but not only the software engineering taught in comp255!). 

If you have a personal question it is usually more appropriate to email the lecturer teaching during that week.

Teaching and Learning Strategies

The feedback that you receive plays a crucial role in your learning. You have many opportunities to seek and receive feedback. During lectures, you are encouraged to ask the lecturer questions to clarify anything you might not be sure of. To ensure you don't miss feedback make sure that you 1) review your marked assignments, 2) read unit emails and information at the unit website and 3) attend lectures which are often used to point out what was expected in assessable work and to provide examples of good solutions and/or examples of common errors.

Lectures are used to motivate engagement with and reinforcement of the unit's subject matter. While most lectures are planned to be recorded, some activities such as role plays and dramas conducted in the lecture theatre will not be captured properly in the recording. Volunteers to participate in role plays will be requested in the lecture, please consider whether you can contribute in this way.  Lectures will of course include a significant amount of learning material, but even more importantly they include contextual material and learning activities that "make meaning" of the subject matter.

Workshops are smaller group classes which give you the opportunity to interact with your peers and with a tutor who has sound knowledge of the subject. Workshops will require working in small groups and sometimes involve reporting back to the class. The classes will focus on reinforcing understanding of the concepts and their practical applications to problems. It is important that you participate in the activities and make some notes from them to assist you with revision of the material.

Assignments will play a key role in providing formative evaluation so that students and the teachers can gauge levels of understanding. Assignments will be related to the lecture, practical and tutorial material and require students to bring together what they have been learning.

Exams will be designed to test your understanding of the course content and your application of the concepts to a number of scenarios or problem statements.

Each week you should:

• Attend lectures, take notes, ask questions
• Complete the weekly questions and submit them via ilearn
• Attend your workshop and seek feedback from your tutor on your work
• Read assigned reading material, add to your notes and prepare questions for your lecturer or tutor
• Start working on any assignments immediately after they have been released.

The topic titles are indicative, and may be subject to change.

The unit comp255 is changing substantially as the software engineering programs at Macquarie are further developed and as we take account of student feedback on previous offerings. While the intended outcomes remain substantially the same, students should not assume that any particular aspects of comp255 this year will be in any particular ways similar to those aspects of previous years' offerings.

Changes for this year (Semester 2, 2018):

• version control systems will be included in workshop material
• assignment 1 and assignment 2 are co-dependent -- students will need to participate in assignment 1 in order to complete assignment 2
• hurdle requirements have been reintroduced to help (some) students manage their learning better
• there will be lecture material emphasising the purpose and importance of the unit for students' likely future careers

At the end of the session, you will receive a mark that reflects your achievement in the unit. 

The final mark for the unit will be calculated by combining the marks for all assessment tasks according to the percentage weightings shown in the assessment summary.  

 No late submissions for the weekly problems and the assignments.