Syllabus

1 Administrative details

Location and time

Kresge 327, MWF 12:30-1:40

Instructors and TAs

Kevin Karplus 315B Appl. Sci. F 2-3 and by appt. 459-4250 karplus@cse

Tracy Larrabee 323 Appl. Sci. W 11-12 and by appt. 459-3476 larrabee@cse

Scott Mobley Howling Cow F 11-12 and by appt mobs@cats

Jack Walther T Th 2-4 jdw@cse

The office hours have not all been set yet and may change during the quarter, due to conflicting schedules--it is a good idea to verify the hours (on the web site or our office doors) before coming.

Tutors

We will have two or more writing tutors this quarter (depending on enrollment and availability).

You will be expected to see a tutor about every two weeks (four or five times during the quarter). Some students will be requested to work with the tutors more frequently. Past experience has been that the best writers were also the most diligent about seeing the tutors (or that the students who used the tutors most ended up writing best--cause and effect are a little hard to separate here).

2 Homework Assignments

The homework assignments will be posted to the web in three formats: Postscript, dvi, and HTML.

To read the files on-line, use Netscape (or one of the other World-Wide Web browsers), and open the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~karplus/. This is the home page for Kevin Karplus, and contains pointers to several other documents, including the assignments for this course. If you have not used Netscape before, almost any of the CATS consultants in any of the computer labs can help you, because browsing the World-Wide Web has become a major form of recreation for the consultants.

The easiest to read on-line is the HTML, but the Latex2HTML translator occasionally makes mistakes, so there may be some strange behavior. Although it is possible to print directly from many World-Wide Web browsers, I'll also provide PostScript files generated directly from the L^ATEX originals. These will generally produce a better looking printed copy that will take up less paper. There will be hypertext links (pointers) from the WWW pages to the PostScript files. The .dvi format is now readable on Macintoshes and UNIX machines with free software, and is much smaller to download than the Postscript.

Please read each of the assignments carefully--don't rely on a vague memory of in-class discussion. Common problems that have come up with the assignments in the past are discussed in the assignment writeups, but still about half of the problems we see in turned in work are things that we specifically warn about.

3 Evaluation

CMPE 185 has no mid-term or final exams. You will be judged about 80% on the papers you write, 10% on the oral presentation near the end of the quarter, and 10% on in-class work, participation in discussions (both in class and electronic) peer editing, and so forth. The final paper is about a quarter of the total weight for the papers (20% overall).

Everything must be turned in by the last day of class, Friday June 12.

4 Special guest lecturers

We are trying to arrange to have some guest lectures this quarter. As a courtesy to our guest lecturers, please make an extra effort to be on time for their lectures.

5 Schedule (due dates)

The following schedule lists the assignments for this quarter with due dates. If the due dates are changed, we will inform you in class. Note that many assignments overlap; this is the normal case for people who write for a living, as engineers do (30-50% of the work day).

You are required to turn in your early drafts, as well as the final copy--the early drafts allow us to see how well you edit and how well you respond to suggestions from your peers.

Save your assignments after we return them to you! We will ask you to turn them all in at the end of the quarter, so that we can write a fair evaluation of your work. Get a large envelope to keep all returned assignments in, so that you can turn in the entire portfolio at the end of the quarter.

assignment draft(s) due final due

1. job application and résumé Apr 10 Apr 13

2. in-class hiring memo Apr 13

3. describing an algorithm Apr 20 Apr 22

4. in-program documentation Apr 27 Apr 29

5. naive user documentation (e-mail manual) May 6 May 11

6. library puzzle May 15

7. survey article May 22 May 26

8. term project proposal memo May 26

9. term project document specs May 29

10. term project progress report Jun 1

11. term project Jun 5 Jun 12

12. oral presentations Jun 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 16

Note: no final exam is scheduled, but the time slot will be needed for oral presenations. Please be sure to come to provide your colleagues with an audience. All written work must be completed and turned in by June 12, the last day of class.

6 Reading assignments

We have collected all the reading assignments scattered through this reader into the following schedule, and have included chapters to read that are not mentioned explicitly in the individual assignments. Several of the chapters are listed repeatedly--this does not mean you need to read them repeatedly, but that you should read them the first time they appear, and review the relevant parts for the later assignments. Note that this reading is in addition to reading the material in this workbook, which should be read in order, with each section read a week or two before the corresponding assignment is due.

It is probably a good idea to read ahead, since you wil have more time at the beginning of the quarter than the end of the quarter.

Please turn in a page of notes on the required reading on each of the due dates! The notes will not be evaluated for content, but are our way of ensuring that you read the material actively, getting the most out of these somewhat expensive books.

assignment read before

[HO91, Chapters 1, 3, 7, and 10] Apr 10

[HO91, Chapters 11 and 13] Apr 13

[HO91, Chapter 27] Apr 15

[HO91, Chapters 12, 14, 21] Apr 17

[SJW79] Apr 22

[HO91, Chapters 8, 9, 22, 23, 29, and 30] Apr 22

[Bro86] [HO91, Chapters 3, 5, 9, 12, 17, 24, 25, and 26] May 4

[HO91, Chapters 2, 4, 5, 12, 16, 18, 21, and 28] May 18

[HO91, Chapter 16] May 22

[HO91, Chapters 11 and 13] May 29

[HO91, Chapters 15 and 19] Jun 3

We have not scheduled the reading of Chapters 6, 20, and 31-38, but you should make time to read them. Non-native speakers are particularly encouraged to read Chapters 29-38 early in the quarter.

References

Bro86

Scott Brookie.
UNIX for Luddites.
Technical report, Division of Social Sciences, Merrill College, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1986.

HO91

Thomas N. Huckin and Leslie A. Olsen.
Technical Writing and Professional Communication for Nonnative Speakers of English.
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1991.

SJW79

William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White.
The Elements of Style.
Macmillan, New York, third edition, 1979.