Dear all,

Important admin things first

• As I mentioned in class, the deadline for ALL activities for Thinking Like A Programmer will be this Friday 6^th November at 5pm. After this point, you will still be able to go on and collect medals towards your module total but they will not count towards your overall module mark any longer.
• As of next week, the lectures for Programming 1 will happen on MONDAYS. Team Skywalker will have their session between 2pm-4pm and Team Solo 4pm-6pm.
• If you are in the Monday workshop group, WE WILL NOT BE RUNNING THE WORKSHOPS ON MONDAY 9^TH NOVEMBER. This is because the corresponding lecture is in the afternoon that same day and we won’t have anything to do on the new unit yet in the morning! Those in the Tuesday workshop, the workshop will be running as normal.
• There will be a Codebash this coming Friday most likely in SB3035 (watch Studyspace just in case the location changes). It will run from 9am to 5pm and will be the final opportunity to pick up medals for TLAP. In the past students who have attended the codebash have gone from hardly any medals to completing nearly all of them. It is an informal atmosphere and you can stay for as long or short a time as you like. Take the opportunity to get yourself a higher grade before it’s too late!

Plagiarism, Collusion and Misconduct

With the deadline approaching, some of you might be tempted to take shortcuts. I HAVE TOLD YOU IN CLASS THAT NOOBLAB CAN DETECT MISCONDUCT. I spent lots of time in the first lecture and in some of the early workshops talking about what is acceptable and what is not. If you have any doubts go back to the very first lecture video and watch it again! In short – you should not at any point be loading someone else’s code into your computer (or copying and pasting it, or manually copying it by hand). You should also not be working on exercises in groups. If you do, NoobLab will flag your activity and you WILL be found out. DO NOT TAKE SHORTCUTS. DO YOUR OWN WORK.

Some people have already been contacted by me about this. This is a serious matter. This will be the final time I say this. Now that you have been warned again, any new attempts to gain credit for someone else’s work will result in ALL of your TLAP medals being revoked. JUST DON’T DO IT.

Team Solo v Team Skywalker

You should all now have had your group allocations from me. IF YOU HAVE NOT BEEN ALLOCATED TO EITHER TEAM SOLO OR TEAM SKYWALKER PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

Some people seem to think that there is some kind of grading system and that one group is “higher” than the other. This is not the case. The groups do a slightly different syllabus from each other but both still fulfil the module’s learning outcomes. The different syllabi are tailored to the abilities and the needs of each group. Just because you are in one group doesn’t mean you will get a lower mark than someone in the other group. In fact, maybe we’ll get a little inter-group competition going on and see who does better!

However, do please note that the lecture content is DIFFERENT. You cannot turn up to the wrong lecture! So, you can’t just rock along to the 2pm lecture because the timing is more convenient. You might as well go to the lecture down the corridor on Interpretive Dance; it would be just as relevant!

If anyone has any questions on the above, please let me know – hopefully that is all nice and clear.

All the best,

Paul