This is the course page for COMP1511's 20T3 offering.
The web page for COMP1511 21T1 is located at:
Hi COMP1511,
We've wrapped up most of the results for COMP1511 and most of you should have recieved official notice from UNSW already of your final marks. We have a couple of things to cover today:
Thanks and Goodbye
The team at COMP1511 have really appreciated the time and effort that you've put into COMP1511 this term and hope that you've learnt something useful that you can take with you in whatever it is you're going to work on next.
On a personal note, thank you for making it through one of the strangest and potentially hardest (hopefully?) years in our lives. Trying to concentrate on studying when you're doing everything remotely can be a very isolating experience. We hope that, if anything it's helped us all understand the importance of human connection, especially while learning difficult concepts.
In the coming months or years, we may find ourselves back at UNSW in person again. If you see your tutor or lecturer on campus, be sure to say hello, we're always interested in hearing from our past students!
UNSW Shutdown
COMP1511 will not be actively responding to emails from the 19th of December, until the 11th of January. We cannot guarantee that your emails will receive a response before the 11th of January. Many University services and campus locations are closed until the 4th of January.
If you are not feeling like your usual self, if you're feeling nervous, lonely, stressed or depressed, there is free, confidential help available – people you can talk to any time of the day or night:
In an emergency:
Medical emergency or self harm/suicide attempt – Call 000 or go to your nearest public hospital emergency room
If you are on campus call the On-Campus Emergency Support Team: 9385 6666
If you or someone you know is thinking of taking their own life, call the Mental Health Line: 1800 011 511
While UNSW is closed, your grades, academic standing and student record will not change. The University re-opens Monday 4 January 2021 and staff will be available at The Nucleus to answer any questions. If you have any questions that relate to your academic results or transcripts visit https://student.unsw.edu.au/results.
Marks Released
As you will know, UNSW has released marks for COMP1511. You will find that your student page now shows your exam marks and provisional final mark. This should be the same as in your marks notice -- if it's not, it's probably a rounding difference, but let us know so we can be sure.
If you have an issue with any of your marks, you should email cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au . Please Ensure your email contains the words "Mark Review" in the subject line, so we can find them all. Please note that your email may not receive a reply until after the 11th of January.
Some of you will have received a mark of "LE". Your student page will give you some information about what the issue with your marks is. If your provisional mark says: "You will be contacted further about this shortly." we will directly contact you about the issue with your marks. If you have questions about this, please email cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au.
If you have been told that we will be in touch with you, please wait for the email from us (it may not arrive until the 11th of January).
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
PS: Chicken wishes you all the best and Happy Holidays!
Hi COMP1511!
We hope you're all enjoying the start of your summer breaks! The tutors here at COMP1511 have been busily marking your work, and this announcement is to let you know that your Assignment 2 provisional marks (and in some cases your final marks) have been published. You can find them here . If your mark isn't final yet, make sure you click on the blue bubble next to ass2_cspotify to see your automated marks.
As usual, if there is a significant issue, please get in touch with your tutor, or email us at cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au .
Your exam marks will be published when they're ready, but that may not happen until the weekend, or early next week.
Wishing you all the best!
~Tom (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi COMP1511!
Hope you're all having a good week!
Yesterday, at around 10am AEDST, we sent out an email to let you know about the exam. It also contained any information about special arrangements you may have. If you cannot find that email, or you were expecting special arrangements which you did not see there, please contact cs1511.exam@cse.unsw.edu.au as soon as possible!
Below this notice is a copy of the exam information text, so you can double check you know it all.
On behalf of all the staff from COMP1511, I wish you all the best for your exam. Please remember -- if you encounter any issues before, during, or after the exam, you can always contact us at cs1511.exam@cse.unsw.edu.au
Good luck, have fun,
~Tom (on behalf of cs1511)
Exam Notification Text
This paper is unique to you. Submitting questions from another paper may result in charges of academic misconduct, and a grade of 0 in this course.
You should keep this paper confidential. Sharing it, during or after the exam is prohibited. You MUST NOT discuss the paper until 24 hours after it starts. Some students have extensions!
Do not place your exam work in any location accessible to any other person. This includes services such as Dropbox and Github.
Ensure during the exam no other person in your household can access your work.
Your zpass should not be disclosed to any other person. If you have disclosed your zpass, you should change it immediately.
To enable motivational images, read to the end of the paper.
For more information about take-home exams, see here:
https://student.unsw.edu.au/<wbr>open-book-and-take-home-exams
If you are unwell, or will not be able to complete this exam within 6 hours, do not commence this exam - contact an exam supervisor at cs1511.exam@cse.unsw.edu.au.
This exam is Open Book , but you may not confer with anyone else, or submit another person's code. You may not ask for help from online sources. This means that you may use any resources from the course, or from online. You may not confer with anybody (including other students).
If there are any issues during the exam, or you have questions, contact an exam supervisor at cs1511.exam@cse.unsw.edu.au.
This exam is covered by the Fit-to-Sit policy. That means that by sitting this exam, you are declaring yourself well enough to do so. You will be unable to apply for special consideration after the exam for circumstances affecting you before it began. If you have questions, or you feel unable to complete the exam, contact cs1511.exam@cse.unsw.edu.au
If you experience a technical issue before or during the exam, you should follow the following instructions:
Take screenshots of as many of the following as possible:
You should then get in touch with us via cs1511.exam@cse.unsw.edu.au
COMP1511 has two hurdle requirements on this part of the final exam which you must meet to pass the course. You must satisfactorily answer a question below which says it meets the arrays hurdle requirement. Multiple questions are marked as meeting the arrays hurdle requirement. Answering any one of these questions satisfactorily will meet the hurdle requirement. You must satisfactorily answer a question below which says it meets the linked lists hurdle requirement. Multiple questions are marked as meeting the linked lists hurdle requirement. Answering any one of these questions satisfactorily will meet the hurdle requirement.
You may complete the exam questions anywhere you wish. You should ensure they work correctly, and pass autotests, on VLab, or over SSH. Autotests are available for all questions to assist you in your testing. Passing autotests does not guarantee any marks. Some Questions may deliberately exclude important autotests. If a question says it does excludes some autotests, make sure you check it works correctly.
Specific Compilation and Submission instructions will be provided in the exam, but will be very similar to
the practice exam provided in Week 10
.
Hey COMP1511!
Just a reminder that Marc is going live today from 2-4pm at this link: https://youtu.be/pmgvXc9RM6U
You can come along and ask any questions you like or things you've been wondering about while studying.
Marc
Hey COMP1511!
Classes for term might be over, but there are still some things to talk about!
Assignment 2
A reminder that Assignment 2, CSpotify was due this evening. If you haven't finished yet, please submit as soon as you can! If you've had some last minute troubles and won't be able to hand in on time, let us know!
Lab and Weekly Test Deadlines
We still have a few deadlines for course work. The Lab 10 deadline is this Tuesday, extended a little from the usual Lab deadline so that it doesn't clash with the Assignment deadline. Remember that this Lab includes the practice exam, which would be a good idea to look at even if it wasn't worth any marks!
The final weekly test is due on Thursday. Again, as this contains questions designed to be at the same difficulty as your exam questions, it's definitely worth looking at.
myExperience Surveys
If you can, please give us some feedback for the course in myExperience. It's only going to be open until the 26th November and is very important for us in improving the course and our teaching. The link to fill out the survey is: https://myexperience.unsw.edu.au/
Study Break Live Stream
Marc will be streaming on Friday (27th November) from 2-4pm. There's no plan for this stream other than to answer questions people might have as well as cover any topics as requests. Feel free to come along if you'd like to study live or ask anything.
I hope things are going ok for everyone in wrapping up all your courses for 2020. There's isn't much left, so I hope you can give it that last bit of effort, then have a chance to relax over summer!
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi COMP1511,
We're so close to the end of term you can almost feel it... we hope you're all enjoying your weeks, and we are looking forward to seeing all your CSpotify submissions! Make sure you submit by the due date, which is Sunday 22nd November at 8pm !
In this notice:
Weekly Test 10 Released
Weekly Test 10 (a.k.a The Last Weekly Test [ominous music plays])
is now out! The weekly test includes 3 questions, in the style of exam questions. It also includes a few short answer questions that do not count towards your mark, but that will give you a sense of what the final exam's short answer questions will be like! This Weekly Test still counts towards your final mark, so make sure to do it before the deadline next Thursday.
Lab 10 Extended until Tuesday 24th November
To ensure everyone has time to complete the lab without affecting their CSpotify submission, we are extending the due date of Lab 10 (including the prac exam) until Tuesday 24th November . Please note that the prac exam is considered part of Lab 10, so you need to complete it to get full marks this week!
Revision Material Released
The sidebar of WebCMS3 now has
Revision Material
. It includes content to help you revise for the exam; and as requested during Marc's Tuesday lecture, it also includes a list of some Lab Exercises that are similar to past exam questions, so you can see more questions that will be somewhat like the exam!
CSESoc's COMP1511 Study Session
CSESoc is running an online study session tomorrow at 1pm for COMP1511 students. This is open to anyone regardless of whether you're in a CSE degree or not. Their message is:
CSESoc is running a study and social session on Friday 20th of November 1-4pm AEDST! You are all welcome to join our discord:
bit.ly/CSESocCourseChats
. At the session, you can flex your amazing coding skills by topping our kahoots! There will also be some games later on, before we get into exams. Come, have some fun and chat with other students, and also chat with helpers who can help you in exams (and who would love to procrastinate with you all...) :)
UNSW MyExperience Surveys for COMP1511
You should have received an email about the course survey for COMP1511. If not, you can find it at https://myexperience.unsw.edu.au/unsw/ . Please fill out the survey . . . your feedback is very valuable to us in improving the course for future students. Also a lot of what the course is now is built from ideas we've received from students from past iterations of the course.
We hope you have a great week,
~Tom (On Behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Staff)
Hey there COMP1511!
We're here at the last week of class content for COMP1511. We have a few things to talk about for this week:
Final Lectures: Includes exam overview
This week we'll be covering the exam in detail as well as summarising the entire course. Hopefully this will give you enough information to go into the exam fully informed and ready to study.
Final Tutorials and Labs: Includes partial practice exam
This week, our tutorials and labs will cover some of the Week 9 content that we'd been learning recently, but they'll also have demonstration content of the exam and how the questions are laid out. This will be good practice so that when you get into the exam there won't be any surprises (except the questions of course) and you'll be ready to focus on the content rather than the infrastructure.
Final Weekly Test: Includes exam-like questions
There is still one Weekly Test which will be released on Thursday as usual. Instead of this being focused on recent content, it will have some sample exam questions. Hopefully by the end of the week, you'll have seen a lot of the ideas of what's going to be in the exam as well as the system we're using for submissions and testing etc.
Assignment 2
CSpotify is drawing to a close, finishing this Sunday the 22nd November. Remember that if you need help with the Assignment one of the best places to get some one on one help is in Lab sessions. You don't have to be enrolled in a lab, you can just join and see if the tutors there have spare time to help you. If you need to know when labs are on, check the
timetable
and connect via Blackboard Collaborate on Moodle. Otherwise, our
Help Sessions
will be running up until Friday. Otherwise, there's always the
Course Forum
, but bear in mind that it's already getting a lot of questions, so there may be delays in getting responses there.
The Exam
Just a reminder to everyone that the exam is on the 4th December from 12pm - 6pm current Sydney Time(AEDT). As you can see, we're going through a lot of details about the exam this week, but it's good to mark this in your calendars.
If there are any issues with the exam, please get in contact with us. We've already tried to contact everyone (via your UNSW email) who has a potential timetabling clash with other exams. There are options available for avoiding these clashes, so please get in touch with us if you need any help with this.
CSESoc's COMP1511 Study Session
CSESoc is running an online study session for COMP1511 students. This is open to anyone regardless of whether you're in a CSE degree or not. Their message is:
CSESoc
is running a
study
and social
session
on Friday 20th of November 1-4pm AEDST! You are all welcome to join our discord:
bit.ly/CSESocCourseChats
. At the session, you can flex your amazing coding skills by topping our kahoots! There will also be some games later on, before we get into exams. Come, have some fun and chat with other students, and also chat with helpers who can help you in exams (and who would love to procrastinate with you all...) :)
UNSW MyExperience Surveys for COMP1511
You should have received an email about the course survey for COMP1511. If not, you can find it at https://myexperience.unsw.edu.au/unsw/ . Please fill out the survey . . . your feedback is very valuable to us in improving the course for future students. Also a lot of what the course is now is built from ideas we've received from students from past iterations of the course.
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi COMP1511!
Extra special notice today to warn you that WebCMS3 will be unavailable this evening, from about 5pm AEDST to 7pm AEDST.
If you're looking for course content during that time, go to: https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/20T3/index .
The course forum will still be available at that time as well: https://discourse.cse.unsw.edu.au/20t3/comp1511/ .
We hope you have a great weekend!
~Tom (On behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Staff)
Hiya COMP1511!
I hope you're all having a great week! In this notice:
Week 9 Weekly Test Released
The Week 9 Weekly Test has now been released! It will be due next Thursday at 8pm.
CSESoc COMP1511 Study Session
CSESoc (the School of CSE's student society) have asked us to pass along this message:
CSESoc is running a study and social session on Friday 20th of November 1-4pm AEDST! You are all welcome to join our discord: bit.ly/CSESocCourseChats . At the session, you can flex your amazing coding skills by topping our kahoots! There will also be some games later on, before we get into exams. Come, have some fun and chat with other students, and also chat with helpers who can help you in exams (and who would love to procrastinate with you all...) :)
Please note that this invitation includes everyone in COMP1511 (whether you study a CSE degree, or are just taking COMP1511 as part of another degree). We encourage you to go if you can!
MyExperience Survey
As we approach the end of the term, myExperience Surveys are now available. Please complete your myExperience surveys here: myexperience.unsw.edu.au/ .
Your tutors and course staff rely on this anonymous feedback to improve our teaching and to better deliver the course (particularly while we're online). It takes about 5 minutes to complete, but could improve the course for years to come. As a result of previous surveys, we have re-arranged course content in lectures, and relaxed the rules about weekly test time limits. Your feedback matters, and you have all had a better course experience because previous cohorts have given us their feedback.
Exam Clash Information
If you have an exam scheduled that clashes with the COMP1511 Final Exam (on the 4th December); you will have received an email from me (t.kunc@unsw.edu.au). If you did not receive an email from me, please email cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au to get in touch with us about your exam clash!
Good luck with all your ongoing work, please get in touch with us via the forum if there's anything we can do to help you!
~Tom (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Staff)
Heya COMP1511!
Welcome to Week 9 of the course . . . we're pushing through solidly to the end of our time with COMP1511. Hopefully everyone's getting stuck into learning about Linked Lists through the lectures and the second Assignment, CSpotify.
In this notice:
Assignment 1 Marking Update
The COMP1511 robots have nearly finished marking your Assignment 1s to the point where we can release provisional results to everyone. Expect these sometime on Monday 9th November. Bear in mind that the COMP1511 humans have not finished all the marking yet, so the results you'll see will likely be just the results of automated marking rather than a complete and final mark.
You can check your results via the View Autotests/Submissions/Marking link on the course website.
Assignment 2 Ongoing Support
Assignment 2,
CSpotify
, is probably heating up now for most students. If you haven't started yet or don't have time to really commit to it, I still suggest at least reading some of the specification and looking at the diagrams so that your subconscious has some time to think about it.
If you're needing any help with the assignment, please feel free to attend any of the COMP1511 labs to ask for help. The tutors know that there might be people coming along to their labs who aren't officially enrolled and if they have some spare time after helping their enrolled students, they may be able to give you some one on one help. If you need to know when they are, you can check the Course Timetable . The links to the Blackboard Collaborate sessions will be accessible via Moodle.
If you can't make it to a lab to get help, there are also
Help Sessions
running very regularly (except on weekends) until the Assignment due date.
If you have questions about generic topics like working with Linked Lists etc, you can ask your questions on the Course Forum , but bear in mind that Assignment code cannot be shared on the fourm and questions that require one on one assistance might be suggested to be answered in a lab or Help Session instead.
Lecture Content this week
We're nearing the end of term now and reaching a point where any content we teach may not be completely covered in Tutorials, Labs and Weekly Tests, so it will be harder for you to completely learn and understand these topics. Bear in mind that any new content introduced this week will not be assessed at the same level as the previous content in the course. While it might be really useful knowledge and absolutely necessary in later studies in Computer Science, these later topics will not feature in any Assignment or Weekly Test and may only be tested a small amount in the Exam.
COMP1511 Exam
Speaking of the Exam, we've noticed a significant number of students who have possible exam timetable clashes this term. We're currently working with the other subjects and UNSW's Examinations Team to make sure that everyone who has an overlap in time for our exam is still treated fairly. If we need to make any changes that affect the whole course, we will definitely announce this and let everyone know, but otherwise, we will do our best to handle everything on a case-by-case basis and make sure that everyone has the same fair assessment.
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi all!
In this notice:
Weekly Test for Week 8
As usual, you will find the Weekly Test in the Tutorials section ( direct link here ).
Assignment 2 Updates
There are some very minor updates coming for Assignment 2.
The first is purely stylistic in files that are not editable in the Assignment. We're going to be making sure our style is consistent across the project (snake_case vs camelCase) and also strictly keeping all lines under 80 characters. This should have no effect on any code you may have written.
We'll also add some messages to the Reference Implementation to say clearly when we don't expect behaviour to be implemented or tested.
Some small clarifications about Testing in the spec are coming also.
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Welcome to Week 8 of COMP1511!
Some things to talk about this week:
Assignment 1 Marking
Your first assignments are currently being automatically marked and will be given to your tutors shortly for hand marking, so your results will be coming out shortly. We're expecting to have all marks released by around Wednesday of Week 9.
Assignment 2 Release
The specification document for Assignment 2 - CSpotify is now available via our course website under the link: Assignment 2 (CSpotify) . This assignment is themed around the idea of creating music libraries, playlists and the code that might be used to manage these. Underlying all this will be the use of Linked Lists.
While we've released the specification document, starter code, autotests and the reference solution will be releasing at 5pm Monday (AEDST) the 2nd November. So at the moment, while you can read the document, you can't get started on the code until Monday 5pm (AEDST).
The due date for the Assignment is the 22nd November, which is the end of Week 10.
Assignment 2 Live Stream
Marc will be hosting a Live Stream to give some more information about the Assignment as well as answer any early questions people have. This will be happening on Thursday, the 5th November from 2-4pm (AEDST). There will be a link to this in the Lectures section of the Course Website.
Tutorials and Labs
Your week 8 Tutorial and Lab are now available.
On top of this, we've been noticing that the course forums can get really busy while an assignment is running but there is often a bit of downtime in some labs. It's good for everyone to know that if you want to get help with an assignment and there's a COMP1511 lab running at that time, or even within the next day, you'll have a much better chance for getting some great one on one help by attending a lab. Your first place for questions will always be the lab that you're enrolled in, but we know that there's often a bit of spare time for tutors to help during their labs.
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi COMP1511!
Hope you're getting back into the swing of things after Flexibility week! This notice includes:
Week 7 Weekly Test Release
The Week 7 Weekly Test has now been released. It will be due at 8pm next Thursday!
Urgent Security Notice for VS Code Users
If you use VS Code, it is very important that you
follow the instructions here
to ensure your CSE account is secure. Please let us know (via the forum) if you have any issues while following the instructions.
Exam Information
UNSW has just released the Provisional Exam Timetable. Unless there is a change in the exam timetable, our exam will be on Friday, 4th December.
Unlike previous COMP1511 exams, our exam will run from 12pm to 6pm AEDST.
This means that, despite what you may see on your timetable, COMP1511 will allow submissions for
only 6 hours
. The exam will be designed so it takes approximately 3 hours to complete, but you will be allowed to work on it for all 6 hours if you wish. We've chosen this time-slot because it hopefully allows most of the world daylight hours to complete the exam.
If you believe your timezone makes these hours impossible for you to complete the exam, please email us at cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au. If you have any other questions about the exam, you're welcome to ask them on the forum, but more information will be released publicly closer to the exam date.
All the best,
~Tom (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hey COMP1511!
Welcome back from Flex Week and Assignment 1 (assuming most people have finished by now). This week we're rolling back into the regular class schedule . . .
Regular classes (Lectures, Tutorials and Labs) resume after Flexibility Week
This week we'll be back to our normal class schedule with Lectures on Tuesday and Friday as well as your scheduled Tutorials and Labs returning. If you're interested in any of the lectures and bonus videos that were presented in Flexibility week, you'll find links to the streams and videos in our Lectures - Week 6 section .
Weekly Tests resume
Our most recent Weekly Test, which came out in Week 5, is due this week (instead of during Flexibility Week). The next Weekly Test will be releasing this Thursday evening as usual and will be due in Week 8.
Assignments Schedule
We'll be starting the marking of Assignment 1 soon, once everyone with extensions has had a chance to submit. We should have results back to everyone sometime during week 8 or 9 (but we'll let you know the details as we're working through the marking process).
Just in case people were wondering, your assignments will be marked by a system similar (but more rigorous) to the Autotests that you have been using to develop the assignment. After that is complete, your tutors will also mark the assignment. Their focus will be on the style and readability of the assignment, but they will also at least check to make sure the automated marking has run correctly.
Assignment 2 will be released at the end of this week. As with Assignment 1, we'll be covering some of the content necessary to understand the assignment in Week 8 as well as having an extra Live Stream to give some clarifications and hints on how to get started. If you enjoyed the freestyle rapping in lectures, you'll probably like the theming in Assignment 2.
Marc (on behalf ot the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hey COMP1511!
Welcome to Flexibility Week!
Flexibility Week
This week is Flexibility Week, which means: No new assessable content will be presented this week and regular classes and weekly deadlines won't be happening.
Tutorials and Labs
We won't be running any tutorials or labs this week. The content we presented in Week 5 will be in Week 7's tutorials and labs.
Lectures
Marc will still be lecturing in the normal times but the lectures are slightly different from normal. The links to the live streams are available in the Lectures Section as usual.
Tuesday's lecture will have very little structured content (just finishing up a demo given at the end of Week 5). Otherwise it'll be a chance for people to ask Marc about different techniques and any revision you'd like to know about in the middle of term.
Friday's lecture will be a presentation of professionalism . . . the collected wisdom of tech managers and engineers in the local computing industry about what kind of skills might be useful (outside of the technical skills that are the main focus of most University subjects and curriculum).
Help Sessions, Forums and Assignment 1
Assignment 1 is due at the end of this week! Hopefully the lack of other work like Labs and Weekly Tests will give you a bit more spare time to work on it. If you need a hand with anything, the Course Forum and Help Sessions will be running through the week.
Weekly Test from Week 5
A reminder that the Week 5 Weekly Test is not due in Week 6, but instead due in Week 7.
CSE's Survey
A reminder and request for everyone to please fill in CSE's student survey that's currently running. You can access it here: https://web.cse.unsw.edu.au/~apps/prismatic/
There's a $100 gift card on offer for one person who fills this out.
I hope everyone has at least a little time for themselves during Flexibility Week (although I know there are probably a bunch of assignments like ours to do).
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
PS: Marc's giving a talk about Video Games with CSESoc on Thursday of Week 6 if anyone's interested ( Facebook Event Link ). If you're following my YouTube channel, the stream will be public for this one.
Hi COMP1511,
It's a short notice, today!
Week 5 Weekly Test Released
We have just released the Week 5 Weekly Test , which will be due in two weeks time; that is, in Week 7 (not Week 6).
Reminder: Survey from CSE
The school would like to survey everyone! Everyone should have received an email about this already, but in case you haven't, there's a link here:
https://web.cse.unsw.edu.au/~apps/prismatic/
Hope you all have a wonderful week,
Hi there COMP1511!
We're here in Week 5 and everything's heating up in COMP1511! Tonight we have a few reminders for everyone:
Assignment 1 - CS Paint
Hopefully everyone receiving this email already knows that the first Assignment for COMP1511 was released a week ago and is in full flight now. If you haven't started working on it yet, I suggest at least reading some of the Assignment Specification so that the ideas of how you might solve the problems start bouncing around in the back of your mind.
Remember that the assignment is due on Sunday 25 October 2020 20:00:00 AEDST (Sydney Daylight Savings Time).
Survey from CSE
The school would like to survey everyone! Everyone should have received an email about this already, but in case you haven't, there's a link here: https://web.cse.unsw.edu.au/~apps/prismatic/
Flexibility Week in Week 6 (not this week, next week!)
Just to remind everyone, week 6 of term is Flexibility Week. This means that in Week 6, there will be a few changes that make most of the course content optional for that week:
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi Everyone,
In this notice:
Week 4 Weekly Test Released
The Week 4 Weekly Test is now available, and is due next Thursday October 15th at 8pm! Enjoy!
Help Sessions Ongoing
Help Sessions have started this week! Find out more info about them here. Remember that help sessions will be significantly more crowded when we get closer to Assignment 1's due date, so go early to get the most out of them!
Assignment Live Stream Recording Available
Today Marc and I (Tom)
recorded a live stream with information about the assignment
. If you're not sure where to start, or just need to see more of Chicken; you can watch it!
Have a great week!
~Tom (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi COMP1511!
This week is a big week, with lots going on. In this announcement:
Sydney has moved to Daylight Savings Time
Sydney has changed timezones -- we are now on Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time (AEDST -- UTC+11). If you are not in South-Eastern Australia, check the time difference -- you can use an online timezone converter to check when deadlines/events are, if you're not sure!
Assignment 1 Released
Assignment 1 - CS Paint
has now been released, and will be due at the end of Week 6 (Sunday 25th at 8pm). It uses everything you've been learning about loops, arrays and functions to make a simple version of the program MS Paint. We'll be covering the last techniques you'll need to complete the assignment in the lecture on Tuesday; and there will be a special livestream that covers the whole of this assignment this
Thursday 2pm-4pm
. You'll also get a thorough introduction in your tutorials this week!
Week 4 Lab and Week 3 Test
The
Week 4 Lab
has now been released. It contains useful exercises to practice the skills you'll need in CS Paint, as well as practice for arrays and functions. The
Week 3 Test
is also ongoing, and due this Thursday at 8pm.
Forum Updates
Firstly, we wanted to remind everyone that
the course forum is
a great place to seek help; but that you are not allowed to post code there (except for code that we've publicly posted already; like lecture code). Tutors can see anything you've autotested or submitted, so just mention in your forum post that you've submitted your code, and we'll find it!
Second, there's now
a thread for programming memes
if you would like to share them!
Week 1 Marking Done
You will find that Week 1's Labs have now been marked, and Week 2's labs will be marked in the next few days. If you have any issues, please get in touch with us!
Moving Classes & Census Date
We have reports of some students going to classes at times that are really inconvenient in their timezones. If we offer a tutorial that's better-timed for you, we are happy to facilitate your unofficially moving classes. Please get in touch with your tutor, or with cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au if you have any questions, or wish to move classes.
Please also note that Census Date is in 1 Week's time on Sunday the 11th of October. This is the last date for you to drop courses without financial penalty. If you're struggling, this is a good time to reach out to your tutor.
We hope you have a productive and enjoyable week,
~Tom (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Staff)
Hi COMP1511!
In this notice:
Weekly Test
The weekly test for week 3 has been released on WebCMS3,
here
. You have until 8pm AEST on Thursday Oct 8 to complete it. You should start by testing yourself - do the questions in a timed environment without help; once an hour has finished you can continue working on the test until next Thursday.
New Course-Admins In-Charge
As you know, Chicken is our Lecturer-in-Charge; and I'm excited to announce there are two new Course-Admins In-Charge; Katia and Mishka.
They have been hitting the books, and are now waiting by the phone for any queries you may have.
Enjoy your week!
~Tom (On behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Staff)
Hello there COMP1511!
We're just rolling into Week 3 of COMP1511 and we have a few things to let you know about this week:
Services Outage and Extension on Lab Deadline
You may have already been affected by the infrastructure upgrade that CSE performed this morning (Sunday the 27th). We weren't sure if that definitely affected anyone who was trying to work on COMP1511, so we've extended the lab deadline until 8pm AEST on Monday the 28th September just in case.
Weekly Tests
This week on Thursday we'll release the first of the Weekly Tests. Each Weekly Test will review content that we've taught and worked on in labs previously. The best way to approach the Weekly Tests is:
Forums and Code
We've noticed that a lot of people are sharing screenshots or copy/paste of code on the forums. Just to let everyone know, all you need to do is submit some code using "give" and the forum tutors will be able to see your code and read it there. It should make things a bit easier for both you and the tutors to access your code that way.
Assignment 1 Releases next Weekend
We're expecting to release the first COMP1511 Assignment next weekend, most likely on Sunday alongside our usual release of Lectures, Tutorials and Labs. This assignment will hopefully allow you to see a clear picture of how much you've learnt about programming so far as well as give you a chance to practice some of the skills you've learnt so far.
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi COMP1511!
Just letting you know (hopefully you've already received a notice about this, but I thought it would be handy to remind you . . . CSE is upgrading some of its network infrastructure this weekend.
This Sunday, 27th September, from 9am to 1pm Sydney AEST, many services such as VLAB and the Course Website will be unavailable.
I hope this means you take a little break from your otherwise relentless and constant practice of your programming techniques :P
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hey there COMP1511,
Here we are at the start of the second week of the course! What we have for you tonight:
Lectures
As usual, our Lecture stream links, slides and some sample code are available on the Course Website in the
Lectures Section
. This week, we'll be continuing learning about the programming concepts we introduced last week, but also adding in a little bit of thinking about problem solving and also introducing a new concept: Looping code.
Tutorials/Labs
The Tutorials and Labs for this week are also available in the
Tutorials, Labs, Tests Section
. You'll also find some solutions to last week's Tutorial and Lab if you're interested. In order to see the links to the solutions, you'll have to be logged into WebCMS3 using your zID.
Weekly Tests
There have been a few students asking about the details of Weekly Tests. Just to be clear, there won't be a Weekly Test released this week, the first one will come out on Thursday of Week 3. I'll say a few more things about them in Week 3's Lectures.
New In-Person Tut/Lab Sessions
Also, if you're someone who had signed up to the Waitlist for a possible in-person Tutorial/Lab, we have scheduled a new class that starts this week. Please check your email for the details!
Marc (on behalf of the COMP151 Teaching Team)
Hey there COMP1511!
Welcome to Week 1 of the course. As we take our first steps on the exciting (and sometimes hilarious) journey into the world of Programming and Computer Science, I have a few things to let you know about:
In Person Tutorials
Last week we gathered information from a lot of students about wanting to take classes in person at UNSW. We've created some face-to-face tutorial and lab sessions that will be run under strict social distancing rules. If you requested to be in one of these tutorials and were assigned a space in one of the slots that opened, you will be receiving an email in the next 24 hours to give you the details of how your class will be running.
If you were interested in taking a face-to face class, but weren't assigned one (or you contacted us after the survey had closed), we have created a waiting list. To go on the waiting list, please fill out this form so that we know how many people are still interested in taking in-person Tutorial/Labs and what time slots you have available. (Edit: Added a link to the waitlist form here that wasn't in my original notice)
It might be possible for us to juggle some teaching staff around and open up another in-person tutorial, but at the moment, you'll have to bear with us as our time and effort is going into preparation for course delivery right now rather than reorganising staff.
Course Content for Week 1
If you've been watching the
course website
, you may have noticed that some of the content has started appearing there.
We have Lecture slides and a little bit of demo code for Week 1. Don't worry if you don't know what to do with the code yet, we're going to be walking through it in the first lectures.
Our Tutorial and Lab content is also available for Week 1. There are no specific readings or expectation that you complete content before the Tutorial or Lab. Most of the time your tutors will walk you through all of the tutorial content and then assist you in completing the Lab content.
In terms of getting ready for the practical side of the course, it's worth having a look at the Home Computing resources we have available to help you get your computer set up in advance of starting the course. If you're having any issues with this, the first Lab is a good time to get some assistance from your tutors on this.
CSESoc, the student society for Computing students, has put together a special page called Lab 0 . This is a session to help people learn hwo to navigate the school of CSE and has a lot of useful advice on how to get around the school (and most of it is still very relevant in a virtual teaching environment). Feel free to try it out and if you'd like to get more information, check out CSESoc on Facebook or Discord to ask more questions (I believe the links to these will be in Lab 0 itself).
Lectures
A quick reminder that lectures in COMP1511 are all live streamed and recorded, regardless of what stream you're enrolled in. Lectures will be from 11am-1pm Sydney time on Tuesday and Friday. The live stream links for the first two lectures are in the
Week 1 Lectures
section of the course website. All lectures will be streamed from my
YouTube Channel
, but they will also be uploaded to Echo360, UNSW's recorded lectures system, which is accessible via
COMP1511's Moodle Page
.
Tutorial and Laboratory Sessions
In the next day or two, you will receive an email from your tutor for COMP1511. It will have information about how you will be able to attend your tutorials. This email will go to your UNSW email address (as will all main course communication). In case you don't receive this email, or are just looking for the specific link to join Blackboard Collaborate, you will find links to all the online tutorials on
COMP1511's Moodle Page
.
Course Forum
The Course Forum , running on a system known as Discourse, is already up and running and ready to answer your questions. In general, the forum is the best place to ask questions about the course, because any answers we give there will be correct and official answers and you'll also be able to search to see if your question has already been asked/answered and any contributions you make there will help other students with the course.
There's currently a thread going there where a lot of the course staff are making introductions, so feel free to drop in and say hi.
Looking forward to meeting you all very soon!
Marc Chee (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi there COMP1511!
We're one week out from starting COMP1511 for Term 3. There are a few things left to sort out before we can start the course and get stuck into the actual content.
Surveys for In-person Tutorial/Labs
A reminder to everyone that is interested in attending tutorials and labs on campus at UNSW to fill out the survey at
this link
. In order for us to be able to plan staffing and room capacity for these, we'll need your responses by
Tuesday 8th, at 6pm AEST.
We will let everyone who's interested know what we're able to organise before Week 1 starts.
After Hours Tutorials
You may have noticed that we have two tutorial slots available at 5pm on Tuesdays. If you need a tutorial that's run outside of business hours, these still have space available and you can transfer your enrolment into them if you need.
Course Outline
The Course Outline has been updated for this term and made available publicly. You can access it via the
Course Website
under Resources or directly via
Course Outline
. There is a bit of information there about the specifics of how we're teaching and assessing the course while affected by COVID-19 restrictions.
In the next few days we'll also be releasing some of the content that we'll be covering in the first week of the course so you can see what we'll be starting with. We're all looking forward to getting this term started and getting to start our little journey into Computing and Programming with you.
Marc (on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Team)
Hi COMP1511!
As Marc said in the previous notice, COMP1511 this term will have the option of face-to-face tutorials and labs. These will be entirely optional - you can complete this course fully online, without attending anything in-person. In-person tutorials and labs will be conducted in accordance with NSW Health Advice, and social distancing will be enforced. They will have a reduced capacity to ensure everyone can be safely distanced.
If you want to attend a tutorial in person, you will need to fill in this form to nominate what times you are available: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?i... . You will need to login to this form with your UNSW account - z1234567@ad.unsw.edu.au . In-person tutorials may not be at the same time as your timetabled, online tutorials.
You will need to complete this form by Tuesday 8th, at 6pm AEST.
If you do choose an in-person tutorial, you'll be contacted next week with more information about the rules and procedures, as well as to confirm what time your tutorial will be.
I look forward to meeting you all, physically or virtually!
~Tom Kunc (Course Administrator, on behalf of the COMP1511 Teaching Staff)
Hi there, COMP1511! (or at least soon-to-be-COMP1511)
I know we're a little ways off starting the course, but I thought I'd at least say hi now that this website ( https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/20T3/ ) is available . . . even if we haven't fully set it up for your use yet.
Course Outline
While the Course Outline isn't available yet, it will be one of the first things that will be visible for this course. If you like, you can see the Course Outline from Term 2
here
knowing that the changes for this term's course will be reasonably superficial. I'll post another notice when the current Course Outline is ready for your perusal.
On Campus Face to Face Teaching
I can't make a notice without letting you know about what's going on with the possibility of some of our teaching actually happening on campus at UNSW Sydney. Firstly and importantly:
No one is being forced to take any part of this course in person. It is possible to take the entire course remotely this term
.
Our teaching content is usually separated into Lectures and Tutorial/Laboratory sessions (conducted in a group of 25 students). The Lectures will be delivered in a Live Stream format and will be entirely remote with no physical location available. If you want a sneak peek, previous terms' lecture content is available at this YouTube Channel . If you don't have access to YouTube, the lectures will also be recorded and made available during the term.
Tutorial/Lab sessions will be running as online classes (via a video conferencing system) in all time slots that are currently available for this course. This means that if you're enrolled in a tutorial and you definitely can't or don't want to attend in-person classes, you don't have to.
We will be contacting everyone in the course soon to organise the possibility of face to face tutorials and labs. These will be opt-in and also subject to available space. We'll figure out how many students would like to learn in person and then we'll organise which tutorial/lab time slots will have a face to face option and who exactly can go to which one. This will take us a little while to organise and it's obviously not as high a priority as getting the actual course ready for delivery, so you'll have to bear with us as we get it done.
Contact
If you need to contact us about this course, please email cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au. That will be the email address where we will be available for administration queries etc. Please do not email my personal UNSW address, you might be waiting a long time for a reply there . . .
Marc Chee (Your new Lecturer, on behalf of the COMP1511 Team)