As the course title implies, ICS10A explores the ways information is presented—both to be helpful and to mislead—and the ways it can and should be represented in both “human readable” and computer-based forms, with a strong emphasis on presentation and representation issues that involve computing. Put another way, the course looks at a number of “information literacy” and “computer literacy” issues. The information literacy topics we’ll examine include how to find information, what forms information may take, how to evaluate information for accuracy and reliability and how to present information effectively. Computer literacy topics will include a broad view of how computers work, what they do, how they have developed and how they may affect us now and in the future.

Through computer-based laboratory exercises, you put into practice a number of the concepts and themes discussed in the lectures by grappling with some presentational and representational problems. In the course of doing these labs, you will also gain experience with software tools you will likely be using in your other coursework and in the workplace.

ICS 10A has three components: lecture, discussion section, and priority lab section ("lab," for short). To be enrolled in ICS 10A, you must be enrolled in the lecture and the disucssion section and in one of the lab sections.

Discussion is where you meet in smaller groups where you can ask your Teaching Assistant (TA) questions about lectures or the lab assignments in a classroom setting.

Priority lab is where you can work on lab assignments and where you take the lab exams; the TA will be present to answer questions. You are guaranteed a seat in the discussion section and the priority lab in which you are enrolled and, subject to the restrictions given below, you may also attend other sections. We cannot stress enough the importance of going to your priority lab: it is where you will have the equipment, software, and in-person assistance helpful in completing your assignments.

Your attendance at lecture, discussion or lab will not be taken into account when determining your grade. However, if you are absent from discussion or lab, the TA will not repeat just for you what s/he publicly told your section, because this repetition unfairly burdens the TA and takes the TA’s time and expertise away from other students. We suggest that you arrange with your classmates to borrow their notes.

To be enrolled in ICS10A, you must be enrolled in lecture, discussion and one (and only one) of its lab sections.

Procedures for dropping the class, changing your lab section, petitioning to add the class, changing your grade option and related matters are discussed in Enrollment Information.

Please keep this information at hand; it likely will come in very handy during the quarter!

The lab rooms (CS 183, CS 189, CS 192, CS 364): We will make extensive use of CS 183, one of the "first-floor computer labs." (The others are CS 189 and CS 192.) You may also use the computers in CS 364, our first-come, first-served open-to-all-students lab.

CS 183 is available to you during your priority lab section. It is also open to you during other ICS10A priority lab times, provided there is a vacant seat, and the person in charge of the section has not prohibited visitors. You must give up your seat if someone who has priority during that time needs it.

You may not use a first-floor lab when a non-ICS10A class is in session.

You can use a first floor lab during "open hours," that is, when no class is using the room. First floor labs are closed on University holidays.

You may also use the computers in CS 364. The same computers and software that are available in the first-floor labs are available in CS 364—but there is no course staff on duty.

The scheduled lab hours and open hours times for all lab rooms are posted on the ICS Lab hours web page, and often on the labs’ doors.

A lab attendant in each lab watches over equipment and can answer questions about your computer account, help you try to revive a "dead computer," add toner or paper to a printer and the like. An attendant cannot help you with your ICS 10A work. Tell the lab attendant if you find a piece of lab equipment that is broken or otherwise needs attention, or you think someone is trying to steal or damage software or equipment.

Printing: We do not require printouts in this class, so you only need a printout if you wish one for your own purposes. To use the printers in the ICS labs, which are part of the Network and Academic Computing Services (NACS) PayPrint system, you'll need to obtain a "PayPrint card." The ICS Lab web site. explains how to get one (and gives other details about the PayPrint system). You are free, of course, to print on any printer to which you have legitimate access.

If you find a piece of lab equipment that is broken or otherwise needs attention, or you think someone is trying to steal or damage software or equipment, tell the lab attendant on duty.

Additional information about the lab rooms, their equipment and software is in the Orientation to the Lab section of the ICS10A Lab Manual.

UCI provides all its students with basic computing, including electronic mail and worldwide Internet services, via a "UCInetID" computer account. All ICS 23 students need this account: if you have not yet activated your UCInetID, go to UCInetID Activation & Password Changers. Click on I want to activate my UCInetID and follow the instructions. Be sure to have your student ID and social security number handy; you'll need them to complete the activation process.

You will also need an ICS Windows computer account to use the computers in lab. If you are already enrolled in the course, or an ICS major, the ICS Department has created your account. If you adding the class (and are not an ICS major), your account will be created a day or two after your petition is received. In brief, you activate your ICS Windows account by bringing your UCI student ID card (and yourself!) to the lab attendant in CS 364. Your ID will be verified; you then take an on-the-computer quiz about the rules regarding use of ICS computer resources and provide a password. Your account is then ready for use. For details on activating ICS accounts, see the Instructions for Account Activation Web page.

While waiting for your account to be activated, you can use our “guest account”; xxx is the user name (login ID) and xxx is the password (the "0" characters are zeroes). Obviously, the account is public, so don’t store any personal information or work there (copy it to a memory stick or elsewhere and delete it from the hard drive right before you log out).

The account will expire about April 21, so be sure to activate your own account by then. (Adds will be processed by this date.)

At the same time your Windows account is activated, you’ll also receive an ICS Unix account that has the same login name and password. We won’t use that account for this class, but it is a good place to store a backup of your computer work.

Explicit instructions for activating a Windows account, and more details about your Unix account, are provided at the ICS Lab web site.

In order to use our computer equipment and computer accounts, you must agree to abide by UCI’s and ICS’ policies regarding them. The documents that describe these policies are kept on the Web; perhaps the best way to access them is from the ICS Instructional Lab Rules web page. Read this page, and follow the links to read the other pertinent ICS and UCI documents.

During my office hours, course-related matters will have first priority. Of course, emergencies may come up, but I’ll try to give advance notice of any changes. If I’m not immersed in something else, I’ll be glad to answer short questions whenever I’m in my office, so feel free to drop by. I’ll also be happy to make appointments for other times during the week.

The TA will hold office hours outside of lab by appointment.

You can most easily get course-related questions answered by coming to lecture and lab and asking them! You can also ask questions by sending email to 10a-questions@ics.uci.edu. (If you do not know how to use UCI's email, ask your TA during priority lab for some pointers.) Course staff checks this email address regularly and will respond to your question within a few hours (somewhat less frequently on weekends and holidays). If the response to your question would be complex or lengthy, we may provide a short response and ask you to meet with me or the TA for a more in-depth discussion.

You can get in touch with me or the TA individually by electronic mail to their personal email address (listed above). But the best strategy for getting a quick answer to a course-related question is to send an electronic message directly to 10a-questions@ics.uci.edu. This goes to all course staff, so you are likely to get a faster repsonse.

Any student who feels he or she may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss his or her specific needs. Also contact the Disability Services Center at (949) 824-7494 as soon as possible to better ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion.

If you have a question or comment of a personal or private nature, please email your TA or me directly, or see the appropriate party in person.

Throughout the quarter, we post messages of general interest to the ICS10A announcements Web page. Be sure to read it regularly.

We send urgent or particularly important announcements by email to your UCInetID account. So, we require that you check your email regularly, once daily during the week at least (and on weekends as well if feasible). If you prefer to read these messages from another account, you need to set your UCI account to forward your email to your preferred account; see the Forwarding UCI E-mail Web page for details.

• Exploring the Digital Domain: An Introuction to Computers and Information Fluency, 2^nd edition, by Abernethy and Allen (required). This text, which covers the main content of the course, is available at the UCI bookstore. The text has a companion Web page at cs.furman.edu/digitaldomain/ from which there will also be assigned readings (and that also has additional material you may find of interest).

• Visual & Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Decision Making, by Edward R. Tufte (required). This reprint of Chapter 2 of Tufte¹s book Visual Explanations describes two situations in where the way information was presented had life-or-death consequences. It is also available in the bookstore.

• ICS 10A Lab Manual, Spring 2006 (“the Lab Manual”) by Jacobson and others, a collection of documents about lab policies and procedures and (of course!) the actual lab assignments. It is available via the Course Web page.

See the Course Schedule for the readings that correspond to each lecture.

Other materials are available to give you more information, extra practice, or a different perspective on ICS10A topics. Some are available on the Web. We also have books available in the Reserve Room of the Science Library, available for two-hour loan. Be aware that copyright law and, in the case of software, license agreements apply to these materials.

We will use several software packages for lab exercises, including SecureCRT and Internet Explorer, for access to your UCInetID account and Internet browsing, respectively and Microsoft Office (for spreadsheet, word processing and database work). You may also find other tools useful, such as IrfanView, a tool that lets you view pictures, and TextPad, a text editor (that could be handy when building a Web page). All these packages (and others) are available for your use on the machines in the ICS labs. If you want to obtain any of this software for use on your own machine, please ask me for details. In brief, Office and SecureCRT and must be licensed (for a fee); Internet Explorer and IrfanView are free.

You will probably want a couple of 3.5" diskettes or a “memory stick” storage devices we recommend as the primary way to back up your work.

Lab assignment: The Lab Manual describes these; 35% of the course grade

One midterm: 30% of the course grade

One final exam: 35% of the course grade

See the Course Schedule for the dates of the exams.

Your grades will be posted on UCI's Electronic Educational Environment (EEE) web site. (If you have not previously used EEE to look up your grades, it's quite straight-forward. Just go to EEE, sign in to MyEEE, and follow the instructions for viewiing course grades.) The TA will review in lab how each assignment was graded (except for the last assignment, which is due after lab sections have finished).

To help you study for the exams, we have placed on the course web site a set of midterm exam and set of final exam study questions— the Midterm Exam Study Sheet and the Final Exam Study Sheet. Feel free to contact the TA or me to verify your answers to these questions.

If you think an assignment was graded incorrectly, discuss your concerns with the TA. If you have questions about how your exams were graded, see me. Please bring us your grading questions within a week after the item is returned, so we have sufficient time to resolve the matter. In any event, you must contact us before the final; UCI rules prohibit regrading of work once the class ends.

We will assign final grades on at least the following scale; the cutoffs may be (and often have been) lower: Grades in the A range (A–, A, and in exceptional cases, A+), 80% and above; grades in the B range, 70%–79%; grades in the C range, 60%–69%; grades in the D range, 50%–59%; and F grades below that. Using an established point scale means that you are not graded in direct competition with your classmates.

A reader will be assisting the TA with assignment grading. To compensate for differences in grading that can occur when different people grade, we will examine each grader’s scores statistically and increase proportionally the scores of students whose grader averages were lower than the grader with the highest average. The result will be that the average number of assignment points lost for each grader will be the same.

Your midterm answer sheet will be available for review in your lab section the week after the exam is given (you must return it to the TA when you leave the room). Your final exam answer sheet will be available at my office a few days after the exam; schedule an appointment with me to review it.

Final course grades, the scores used to compute them, a number of statistics about the class and related end-of-quarter matters will be available on the course Web page soon after the course is over. Follow the links to Course Grades and A Note on Course Grades to access that information.

You are expected to know and follow the academic dishonesty policies of both ICS and the UCI. Do take a few minutes to read the policies, which can be found (among other places) at the ICS and UCI academic honesty policies Web pages.

In addition to those rules, there are some specific rules regarding student-with-student cooperation in this class:

On lab assignments, the work you turn in must be your own. You may not have another person write part of your lab or let someone plan the detailed strategy you will use to attack the problem. You may ask other students for help on technical matters, such as how to use Office features or interpret an error message. You may, of course, get help from the TA and the instructor: they are informed about what sort of help is allowable, so feel free to ask them any question you have (but they may decline to answer it if it means they would be doing your work for you). You may also use data and programs we provide to you. When specifically allowed by a lab exercise, you may also adapt for use in your work information given in texts or other sources, but you must also credit the source of that information in your assignment.

On exams, you must do your own work: Using answers from another source, such as a student sitting near you at the exam, is a particularly serious infraction of academic honesty rules.

A violation of these rules will be considered academic dishonesty and dealt with accordingly.

If you are unsure whether certain behavior is acceptable, ask before you engage in it.

• Read this Course Reference, its attached documents, and the Web documents it references.

• Get a couple of diskettes or a memory stick to back up your work.

• Get a copy of the textbook.

• Get a print card (if you plan to use lab printers).

• Download a copy of the Lab Manual.

• Activate your UCInetID.

• Activate your ICS account.

• As needed, learn about email and our lab set-up, and become comfortable with basic computing skills needed to begin the lab exercises, as described in the Orientation to Lab section of the Lab Manual.

• Begin working on Lab 1.