Requirements to pass the unit

To pass this unit you must:

• Attempt all assessments, and
• Achieve a final unit total mark equal to or greater than 50%

Late Assessment Submission Penalty

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark of the task) will be applied for each day a written report or presentation assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a grade of ‘0’ will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. The submission time for all uploaded assessments is 11:55 pm. A 1-hour grace period will be provided to students who experience a technical concern. For any late submission of time-sensitive tasks, such as scheduled tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, and/or scheduled practical assessments/labs, please apply for Special Consideration.

Assessments where Late Submissions will be accepted

• Major Creative Work (Week 6) - YES, Standard Late Penalty applies
• Major Creative Work (Week 10) - YES, Standard Late Penalty applies
• Major Creative Work (Week 12) - NO, unless Special Consideration is Granted
• Module Exams - NO, unless Special Consideration is Granted

Special Consideration

The Special Consideration Policy aims to support students who have been impacted by short-term circumstances or events that are serious, unavoidable and significantly disruptive, and which may affect their performance in assessment.

Written Assessments: If you experience circumstances or events that affect your ability to complete the written assessments in this unit on time, please inform the convenor and submit a Special Consideration request through ask.mq.edu.au.

Weekly practice-based tasks: To pass the unit you need to demonstrate ongoing development of skills and application of knowledge in 3 out of 5 in each of the two sets of weekly practical classes. If you miss a weekly practical class due to a serious, unavoidable and significant disruption, contact your convenor ASAP as you may be able to attend another class that week. If it is not possible to attend another class, you should still contact your convenor for access to class material to review in your own time.

Note that a Special Consideration should only be applied for if you miss more than three of either the two sets of weekly practical classes.

CLASSES

Each week of COMP2000 has a two hour lecture and a two-hour practical class. For details of days, times and rooms, consult the University timetables webpage (http://www.timetables.mq.edu.au). Practical classes commence in Week 1 and are held in the 4RPD Computer Laboratories computer laboratories for on-campus classes and in zoom rooms for online classes (links published in iLearn).

In all cases students are expected to do significant preparatory work, readings and exercises before attending classes.

REQUIRED AND RECOMMENDED TEXTS AND/OR MATERIALS

The required text for the unit is (available online via the Macquarie University Library, see below):

• Head First Design Patterns by Eric T Freeman, Elisabeth Robson, Bert Bates and Kathy Sierra, O'Rielly Media, October 2004 (ISBN:978-0-596-00712-6) 

There will be no lecture notes provided, all examinable material is given in course readings and the textbook.  Students are required to study this material and answer preparatory questions before class.

The Macquarie library contains many books on object-oriented programming in general, and on programming specifically in Java, that you may want to use to supplement the text and lecture notes.

One particularly useful service that the library provides you with is access to many Java related titles online via the Safari Books Online (http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/) service. Using this service, which you can only access from a machine connected to the University network, you might like to have a look at the following Java titles:

1. Head First Design Patterns by Eric T Freeman, Elisabeth Robson, Bert Bates and Kathy Sierra, O'Rielly Media, October 2004 (ISBN:978-0-596-00712-6) 
2. Learning Java, 3rd Edition by Jonathan Knudsen; Patrick Niemeyer, ISBN: 978-0-596-00873-4
3. Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition by David Flanagan, ISBN: 978-0-596-00773-7
4. Java Examples in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition by David Flanagan, ISBN: 978-0-596-00620-4 The web itself is an ideal source of Java information, and from time to time we will be posting useful links on the COMP2000 iLearn site. Two particularly useful resources are:
5. Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel, a free version of the 3rd edition of this pretty comprehensive book is available for download from http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/ and its 4th edition, which is updated for use with Java 5 and 6, is available for $25 from http://mindview.net/Books/TIJ4.
6. The official Java Tutorial http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/ which is a comprehensive resource providing trails covering topics ranging from the basics of Java programming to more advanced subjects like GUI development, Generics, Class Reflection, Sound, Graphics, Network Programming and Concurrency

UNIT WEBPAGE AND TECHNOLOGY USED AND REQUIRED

Online Resources

COMP2000 will make extensive use of the iLearn system for delivery of class materials, discussion boards, real time chat, submission of work and access to marks and feedback. Students should check the iLearn site (http://ilearn.mq.edu.au) regularly for unit updates.

Questions and general queries regarding the content of this unit, its lectures or practicals should be posted to the appropriate discussion board on the COMP2000 iLearn site. In particular, any questions which are of interest to all students in this unit should be posted to one of these discussion boards, so that everyone can benefit from the answers.

Echo360

Audio and screen video recordings of the lectures will be made available online via Echo360. A link to these recordings will be provided on the iLearn site for this unit

Technology Used and Required

The practical work in this unit involves programming in Java (https://www.java.com) using the Microsoft Visual Studio Code IDE (https://code.visualstudio.com). We will also be using a distributed version control system called Git to access shared code repositories.

This software is already installed for you in the computing labs located in 4 Research Park Drive and is also available to download, install and use for free on your own machine(s). It should work equally well on Mac OSX, Linux or Microsoft Windows platforms.

Tools and libraries to support debugging, automated testing, GUI development and so forth will be introduced and used as the semester progresses. When that occurs you will be provided with full instructions on how to install and use each one.

Methods of Communication

The unit's iLearn page contains three kinds of forums:

• Announcements - posts of general interest will be made here by the teaching staff. Students must ensure that they keep up to date with any announcements made.
• Forum - students can post queries here and they may be answered by either teaching staff or other students in the unit.
• Contact the teaching staff - students can post queries here that are only visible to teaching staff, not other students.

Students should avoid using email and instead use the "Contact the teaching staff" forum to raise issues or ask questions of a private nature. If an email is sent it must be from the student's official Macquarie student email address. Emails from non-Macquarie addresses will not be answered.

COVID Information

For the latest information on the University’s response to COVID-19, please refer to the Coronavirus infection page on the Macquarie website: https://www.mq.edu.au/about/coronavirus-faqs. Remember to check this page regularly in case the information and requirements change during semester. If there are any changes to this unit in relation to COVID, these will be communicated via iLearn.

Updated distribition of assessment checkpoints to encourage in-class participation

COMP2000 is supported by the Computing Drop-in Centre (CDC) that operates daily (weekdays) from,

• 09:00 to 11:00 (trial, at least during the first half of S2 2023),
• 12:00 to 14:00, 
• 15:00 to 17:00,
• 18:00 to 20:00 (online)

The web page at https://students.mq.edu.au/study/faculties/science-and-engineering/drop-in-centre contains further information including,

• location,
• the service agreement about what the centre can and cannot help you with,
• week in which the service begins,
• other units supported by the centre,
• roster (as not all time slots will have staff supporting every unit),
• zoom links for the evening sessions.