Informatics 1 WS 2019

Website of Prof. Dr. Barne Kleinen, Professor for Media Informatics (Bachelor/Master) at HTW Berlin

Overview

Welcome!

Informatics 1 is an introduction to object-oriented programming using the Java language. In this class we will be using Greenfoot and BlueJ as development environments. You will learn about writing programs, designing simple algorithms, about control structures, data types and structures, objects and classes.

Language

This class will be held in English, and most written material will be in English. You are free to choose German or English for your written assignments.

Meetings

The class consists of 2x2h of lectures and 2h of lab per week. Find the details in LSF - there’s a link to the LSF class in the menu under ‘External Links’.

Additional to the class meetings there will be a tutorial:

  • Info1 tutorials held by Lotte Unckell on Tuesdays 9:45 - 11:15 in Room WH C 579

Grades

Your grade in Info1 will be a weighted mixture of the evaluated elements of the course. The partial grades will be assessed as follows and then graded according to the [Grading Scale]({{ site.BaseURL }}/studies/grading/grading-scale).

  • Lab Reports: 50%
  • Exam: 50%
  • Lecture summaries: 8%

Lecture Summaries (aka Lecture Notes)

In the Moodle collaboration room you can find a section called “Lecture summaries”. You are expected to write 5-10 complete sentences summarizing each lecture, or a handwritten/drawn A4 Paper (e.g. Sketchnotes).

Lecture summaries are due at 22.00 on Monday for both lectures of the past week. They are either done or not done. I expect you to do 12 out of 13 out of all to get the full 8%. If I find plagiarisms of lecture summaries (especially from the Wikipedia), you will not get any credit for any lecture summary.

I couln’t attend class! What to do about the Lecture Summary?

If you couldn’t attend the lecture, you can still write a summary: Ask your mates what we did in class, and read up the according chapter(s) in the book, and write or draw a summary. Please put a brief note on the page that you did this based on your own reading.

Lab Reports

You find detailled information about them on the Lab Page

Exam

There will be a 2-hour online examination at the end of the term. The examination will cover Java programming and conceptual understanding in ways that may be difficult to assess during the laboratory sessions. The exam will be an on-line exam with two parts, a multiple-choice part and an essay / programming part. Please consult LSF for the definite date and time.

Java-Tutorials and Book

Most of this lecture will be based on: D. Barnes; M. Kölling: Objects first with Java. A Practical Introduction using BlueJ; Pearson Education. 6th edition.

German translation: Barnes, David J., Kölling, Michael: Java lernen mit BlueJ. Pearson, 2017, 6. Auflage. Pearson

There are copies available in the library, and you can also obtain an older edition - examples and chapter order vary, but the general content is mostly the same apart from the newer chapters on lambdas.

There are many Java Tutorials out there on the web, my recommendation are the Tutorials by Sun/now Oracle; especially the Trail “Learning the Java Language”, as they are very concise and comprehensive.

Information on this class is dispersed on various locations depending on the nature of the information and wether it can be public or not. On the top of the page you find a navigation that gives you access to all those places - they are in detail:

  • These pages for publicly accessible information, especially the Schedule, Lab exercises, or further general information as the [Grading Scale]({{ site.BaseURL }}/studies/grading/grading-scale)
  • External Links:
    • Moodle for all Information that cannot be made publicly available and for handing in your lecture summaries and lab reports.
    • Github for publicly accessible code examples used in the lecture and the assignments (you don’t need to know how to use git to use github - note the “download as zip” buttons on the starting page of each repository!)
    • last not least the LSF System, where you can find class times and rooms. Note that is possible to see the general schedule for your Semester (Term Schedule above) and also Schedules for all people teaching (Dozentenpläne) - this is often the fastest way to find out the room for your next class.