SYLLABUS
CGS-2531 Problem Solving with Computer Software
T4-5, R4 @ CSE 222
Summer 2011
PRINT THIS OUT AND CARRY IT WITH YOU
Course Home Page:
www.cise.ufl.edu/class/cgs2531su11
This site contains an Announcements page. You must monitor this page regularly, as
all major course announcements will be posted there, and NOT on Myitlab.
Course Portal:
http://www.pearsoncustom.com/fl/ufl_cgs2531/
Course Instructor:
Office:
Email:
Office Hours:
Teaching Assistant:
Office:
Email:
Teaching Assistant:
Office:
Email:
Manu sethi
E309 CSE
msethi@cise.ufl.edu
just after class
Martin Sarov
E309 CSE
mgsarov@cise.ufl.edu
Qi Lin
E309 CSE
lqi@cise.ufl.edu
Course Description: The goal of this course is to help the student gain proficiency in text editing and formatting,
spreadsheet and database management, and presentation preparation. An additional goal of the course is for the
student to gain basic knowledge of modern-day computing technology. We will use the Microsoft Office 2007
software package, including the following capabilities:
1. Text editing and formatting using Word 2007,
2. Spreadsheet and database manipulation using Excel 2007, and
3. Presentations using PowerPoint 2007.
Regarding computing technology, we will cover three chapters of Pearson’s “Technology in Action”
book. These chapters will be available on-line at the course site at Myitlab.com. Those three chapters are as follows:
1. TIA-2: The components of a modern-day computer
2. TIA-6: Understanding Hardware.
3. TIA-7: Networking and Security.
Textbook: Exploring Office 2007, customized package, Pearson, ISBN 0558693261. Students must have access to
the items in this package, but purchase of the entire package is not required. There are three options for students to
acquire the necessary materials.
1.
The primary option is the all-electronic package, acquired through the Pearson UF Portal:
http://www.pearsoncustom.com/fl/ufl_cgs2531. The package costs approx. $95, and consists of:
a. Exploring Office 2007 Vol I: Chapters Word 1-4, Excel 1-4, Powerpoint 1-3.
b. Exploring Office 2007 Vol II: Chapters Word 5, Excel 5,6
c. Technology in Action, Chapters 2,6,7.
d. Access code to the www.myitlab.com site.
The all-electronic package contains exactly the necessary material.
2.
You may purchase the Pearson access code for this package at the UF Bookstore, for approx. $140. The
ISBN is 0558392342.
3.
You may assemble the materials from various other sources. New and used versions of the book, as well as
the access code, may be purchased from various online vendors, such as www.amazon.com and
www.half.com.
They may also be purchased online directly from the publisher, Pearson, at
www.myitlab.com/access_myitlab.asp. Copies of the textbook will be available on reserve in
The Marston Science Library. Cost: WYCG (whatever you can get). The access code by itself costs
approx. $65. If you purchase the access code separately (i.e. not through the portal nor at the bookstore),
you will not have access to the e-book materials.
The one item you must have is access to the myitlab on-line system, in order to access assignments, course
materials, exercises, etc. All homework assignments are to be done on the www.myitlab.com site. No exceptions. To
use the site, you must be on a XP (SP2 or greater), Windows Vista, or Windows 7 computer, running Internet Explorer
6, 7 or 8. No other platforms are compatible with myitlab (sorry Mac users). The myitlab software has been
installed on the computers in all CIRCA labs on campus (http://labs.at.ufl.edu/)
The process of registering with Myitlab and enrolling in the correct Myitlab course will be shown on the first day of
class. A Myitlab access code looks like this: DSSXCA-FLVGF-PRBYS-ADNAU-HXABT-LAVTX. You will use
your Myitlab access code to register with the Myitlab site. Once registered, you need to enroll in the correct Myitlab
course, using a course ID, given to you by your instructor. A Myitlab course ID looks like this: CRXAB4Y-815321.
It is essential that you enroll in the correct Mytilab course. Make sure you attend the correct section on the first
day of class. Do not get the course ID from a friend, or from anyone other than your instructor. Each section in
CGS-2531 has a different course ID. Students who enroll in the wrong section will receive zero credit for any
homeworks they submit while in the wrong section. Verifying that you used the correct course ID is easy: as soon as
you enroll in it, a course icon will appear, containing the UF section number. Details in class.
Class Calendar (Summer C 2011) :
In the table below, CLASS 1,2, and 3 refer to the first, second and third class meeting of the week.
W E E K
DATES
CLASS
Topics
REFERENCE
1
May 09 –
May 13
2
May 16 –
May20
3
May 23 –
May 27
4
May 30 –
June 3
5
June 6 –
June 10
6
June 13 –
June 17
7
June 20 –
June 24
8
June 27 –
July 01
9
July 04 –
July 08
10
July 11 –
July 15
11
July 18 –
July 22
12
July 25 –
July 29
13
Aug 01 –
Aug 05
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
Myitlab, syllabus
Office Fundamentals
Document Formatting
Document Formatting
Editing and Formatting
Editing and Formatting
Tables and Graphics
Tables and Graphics
Change Tracking
Footnotes
Captions
Mail merge/Templates
Computer components
Hardware, Networking and Security
Intro. To Excel
Intro. To Excel – contd.
Review
EXAm 1
Myitlab
Office Fundamentals Ch. 1
Word Ch. 1
Word Ch. 1
Word Ch. 2
Word Ch .2
Word Ch. 3
Word Ch. 3
Word Ch. 4
Word Ch. 4
Word Ch. 4
Word Ch. 5
Myitlab site, TIA-2
Myitlab site, TIA-6 and TIA-7
Excel Ch. 1
SUMMER BREAK
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
Formulas, Page setup
Formulas and Functions
Financial Functions
Charts
Charts
Worksheets and Tables
Worksheets and Tables
Review
EXAM 2
Data Tables
Data Tables
Pivot Tables and Charts
EX-6
EX-6
EX-6
Powerpoint Presentation Development
Review
EXAM 3
Excel Ch. 1
Excel Ch. 2
Excel Ch. 2
Excel Ch. 3
Excel Ch. 3
Excel Ch. 4
Excel Ch. 4
Excel Ch. 5 (see myitlab site)
Excel Ch. 5
Excel Ch. 5
Excel Ch. 6 (see myitlab site)
Excel Ch. 6
Excel Ch. 6
Powerpoint Ch. 1/ Ch. 2 (Ch. 3)
NOTE: THESE EXAMS DATES ARE TENTATIVE, and subject to change based on room availability and
potential exam conflicts with other courses. See below.
Class Policies:
1. Attendance: Lecture attendance is not required, but is strongly recommended. You may well be able to
study and learn this material on your own, but we think you’ll find this course a lot easier and less timeconsuming if you attend class.
2. Exams: Exams are closed book, and closed notes. No “crib sheets” are allowed. TALKING TO OTHER
STUDENTS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED DURING EXAMS. Exams will be in class on the dates shown
above. Each exam will be of 75 minutes duration. All claims regarding exam grades MUST be
resolved within one week of the date of the exam results being posted.
All claims regarding exam grades MUST be resolved within one week of the date of the exam
results being posted.
To help you prepare for exams, we will provide sample exams, and refer you to the exercises in the textbook.
For minimal exam preparation, the sample exam may suffice. For thorough exam preparation, you’ll need the
textbook, whether on paper or the e-book. The proper way to prepare for the exam is to do the exercises at the
end of each chapter, and “play” with the application (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) to gain proficiency.
Attendance at all exams is required. Unjustified failure to appear for an exam will earn a grade of zero on
that exam. Justifications for not attending an exam include official UF sponsored events taking place out of
town, major religious holidays, and conflicts with assembly exams in higher-numbered courses. For these
situations, justifications MUST be made AT LEAST ONE WEEK in advance, in writing to the course
coordinator.
Justifications for not attending an exam also include serious illness and/or family emergencies, which cannot
be predicted. In such cases, notification to the course coordinator is still required BEFORE THE EXAM. In
case of an illness, a doctor’s note explaining the nature of the condition, the dates involved, and the expected
time of recovery, is required, as soon as practical. A doctor’s note that does not contain ALL these elements
will not be accepted. Students cannot claim they’ve been too ill to do their schoolwork, but not ill enough to
go see a doctor or to the infirmary. Failure to notify the course coordinator BEFORE THE EXAM will result
in a grade of zero on the exam. Only the most dire (and documented) circumstances can excuse a student
from the requirement of advance notification. Such dire circumstances must be such that the student is unable
to send an email, or make a phone call, or ask someone to do so. Justification for not attending an exam does
NOT include family reunions, vacations, or attendance at weddings, no matter the location of the event, or
how long it has been planned. For justified exam absences, makeups will be arranged on a case-by-case basis.
BOTTOM LINE: We expect you to treat this course LIKE A JOB. For crucial events such as exams, you
CANNOT FAIL TO SHOW UP and expect to “fix it later”. You MUST “call in sick” or “email in sick”, or
“call in a family emergency”, or ask a friend to do so, before the exam.
Students with disabilities often require extra time on exams. Such students must obtain a letter from the
Disability Resource Center, and present it to the course coordinator during office hours. Exams for these
students will be arranged and administered by the DRC.
We have attempted to schedule the exams so that they do not conflict with known, major, work-prohibited
religious holidays. The UF policy on religious holidays appears HERE. The 2010-2011 UF calendar of
religious holidays appears HERE. If you wish to be excused from an exam or homework assignment due to a
major religious holiday (one that is listed on the UF calendar), you must notify the course coordinator at least
one week in advance. If you wish to be excused from an exam or homework assignment due to a major
religious holiday that is NOT listed on the UF calendar, you MUST notify us at least one month in advance, as
these cases require special scrutiny on the part of the University.
3. Homework: We are planning on having 14 homework assignments, but it could be 13 or 15 instead. A few
homeworks will have multiple parts, but will count as ONE homework. The following rules apply:
a. Homeworks will be weekly, typically assigned on Mondays, and due the following Monday at
11:59:00 p.m. Unsubmitted homework counts as a zero. No late homework is accepted. The
deadline for homework is at exactly 11:59:00 p.m. Eastern Standard/Daylight Time. The deadline is
strictly enforced by the Myitlab site. Exceptions must be justified in advance: the rules are the same
as for exams, i.e. advance notification is required. If you miss a homework for a justified reason,
arrangements must be made with the course coordinator immediately (i.e. at most one business day)
upon your return. Failure to make arrangements promptly will void the justification. The course
coordinator will give you a reasonable amount of time (typically three business days after you are
back) in which to complete and submit the homework. At that time, your homework will be marked
as late and assigned a grade of zero, but the course coordinator or the head TA will change it
manually.
b. Before attempting the homework, we recommend you do the exercises on the myitlab site; they’re
there for a reason.
c. You may submit your homework as often as you like; Myitlab will record the highest grade earned.
You may also do only part of the homework, and save it for later. Important: Myitlab has a known
bug: after answering all questions in the homework, do not click on the “Save for Later” button. If
you do, Myitlab will not let you complete (or submit) it later if all questions have been answered. If
you haven’t answered all the questions, it’s OK to save your homework for later.
d. No extra credit homework will be assigned, so make sure you do them ALL. Also, no homework
grades will be dropped.
e. STRONG ADVICE: finish a day early. Unacceptable excuses for not doing your assignment
include (but are not limited to): “my machine broke”, “there was a power outage”, “I lost my hard
drive”, “I lost my Internet connection”, and “I forgot my password”. One major educational goal of
this course is to have students develop the necessary skills to meet deadlines with computers. When
dealing with computers, and meeting a deadline, planning (and allocating extra time) is essential. You
should plan on having hardware failures. You should plan on failing Internet connections. You
should plan on the dog eating your homework 
f. Sometimes Myitlab accepts only a limited number of ways (or even ONE way) in which to
accomplish the task at hand, even if there are other ways to do it in Office 2007. It is your
responsibility to determine what that procedure is, before the deadline. This means you must allocate
enough time to get started on your homework, to get stuck on a technical issue, and to need an extra
day to go get some questions answered, by email or during office hours.
g. If you’re still working on your assignment with only minutes (or even hours) left until the deadline,
you’re asking for trouble (Murphy’s Law: everything that can go wrong, will go wrong). Every
semester the course coordinator receives many requests for additional time to finish the homework,
due to lost Internet connections, misconfigured computers, and other assorted misfortunes. Invariably,
these are denied. In particular, if you’re still working on your homework at the deadline, Myitlab will
not submit it for you at 11:59:00 p.m.
h. After submitting your homework, you are not done until you check that your grade is recorded
accurately. You can find your grade in the folder “GRADES → HOMEWORK”. Myitlab has
occasional glitches, and a few cases have been reported in which the submission process seemed to
succeed, but no grade was recorded. Therefore you MUST check that your grade is recorded
properly, before the deadline. Students cannot claim later that they were unaware that their
submission and grade had not been recorded by Myitlab.
i.
j.
The Myitlab site is quite reliable, but on rare occasions the site goes down. We will compensate by
extending homework deadlines only in cases of major failures of the Myitlab site, lasting at least 4
hours.
All questions or issues related to a given homework must be resolved within one week of the deadline
for that homework.
BOTTOM LINE REGARDING HOMEWORKS: DON’T PUSH THE DEADLINE. DON’T
ASSUME ALL YOUR HARDWARE/SOFTWARE/INTERNET WILL WORK OK WITH ONLY
MINUTES LEFT. THE DEADLINE IS AT 11:59:00, NOT 11:59:59.
4. Grades: 40% of your grade will consist of your homework, and 60% will be your exams (3 exams, 20%
each). No homework grades will be dropped. The final point total will be rounded to the nearest whole
number. All assignments are to be done on the www.myitlab.com site. No exceptions. To use the site, you
must be on a Windows XP (SP2), Windows Vista, or Windows 7 computer, running Internet Explorer 6, 7 or
8. No other platforms are compatible with Myitlab (sorry Mac users). The Myitlab software has been
installed on the computers in all CIRCA labs (http://labs.at.ufl.edu/) . For grading questions, contact your
instructor TA. Grading questions and re-grading issues must be resolved within 1 week of the due date of the
assignment.
5. Grading scale:
A
AB+
B
BC+
C
CD+
D
DE
92-100
90-91
87-89
83-86
80-82
77-79
73-76
70-72
67-69
63-66
60-62
0-59
75 or higher is required for a
grade of S (S/U option)
A C- will not be a qualifying grade for critical tracking courses. In order to graduate, students must have an
overall GPA and an upper-division GPA of 2.0 or better (C or better). Note: a C- average is equivalent to a
GPA of 1.67, and therefore, it does not satisfy this graduation requirement. For more information on grades
and grading policies, please visit: http://www.registrar.ufl.edu/catalog/policies/regulationgrades.html”
6. Honesty Policy:
All students admitted to the University of Florida have signed a statement of academic honesty committing
themselves to be honest in all academic work and understanding that failure to comply with this commitment
will result in disciplinary action. This statement is a reminder to uphold your obligation as a UF student and to
be honest in all work submitted and exams taken in this course and all others.
7. Accommodation for Students with Disabilities:
Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. That
office will provide the student with documentation that he/she must provide to the course instructor when
requesting accommodation.
8. UF Counseling Services:
Resources are available on-campus for students having personal problems or lacking clear career and
academic goals. The resources include:
- University Counseling Center, 301 Peabody Hall, 392-1575, Personal and Career Counseling.
- SHCC mental Health, Student Health Care Center, 392-1171, Personal and Counseling.
- Center for Sexual Assault/Abuse Recovery and Education (CARE), Student Health Care Center, 3921161, sexual assault counseling.
- Career Resource Center, Reitz Union, 392-1601, career development assistance and counseling.
9. Software Use:
All faculty, staff and student of the University are required and expected to obey the laws and legal
agreements governing software use. Failure to do so can lead to monetary damages and/or criminal penalties
for the individual violator. Because such violations are also against University policies and rules, disciplinary
action will be taken as appropriate. We, the members of the University of Florida community, pledge to
uphold ourselves and our peers to the highest standards of honesty and integrity.
10. Contacting Us:
For technical assistance with myitlab, contact Pearson by phone, email or chat session (contact information
is on the myitlab site). For academic questions, contact your instructor in office hours or by email.
Important: Please do not use Myitlab messaging. Use our email addresses (listed above) instead. We will
not be checking messages through Myitlab. Also, please do not use or access any of UF’s Sakai or e-Learning
websites for this course. Whenever you send email to us, the email must have “CGS-2531” as its subject.
Don’t forget to include your name and your section number. Before emailing or asking questions, always read
the syllabus, the announcements, and the schedule. It is quite possible that your question has already been
answered in one of these places. We will answer your questions and resolve your issues the quickest, and
most clearly, during office hours. We receive many emails and reply to them in their order of importance.
Normal response time is up to one business day.
11. Getting help. You can get help from friends and each other for your homework assignments, but if someone
else does your assignments, and you don’t learn how to do it, you will undoubtedly fail the exams.
12. FAQs:
a. Can I buy a used textbook? Certainly. However, you will still need a Pearson access code.
b. Can I buy an older edition of the textbook? Yes, as long as it’s Office 2007. Office 2003 will not do.
c. Can I use Office 2008 for the MAC? Not with Myitlab.com, as explained above. For your own use,
yes (almost). Office 2008 (MAC) and Office 2007 (PC) are very similar, but there are some subtle
incompatibilities. Our platform of choice, for better or worse, is Windows and MS Office 2007. On
exams, we won’t make provisions for anything done differently on a MAC.
d. Do I need to buy the textbook at all? No, but to help you prepare for exams, we will provide sample
exams, and refer you to the exercises in the textbook. For minimal exam preparation, the sample
exams may suffice. For thorough exam preparation, you’ll need the textbook, whether on paper or the
e-book. If you don’t have a copy, you can use one of the (handful of) copies on reserve in the
Marston Science Library. However, we expect those copies to be in high demand as exam time
approaches.
e. Do I need to buy Office 2007? We recommend it, but it’s not required (you can work in one of the
CIRCA labs). Microsoft offers a trial version of Office 2007, good for 60 days.