August 8, 2009

Dear Student

           Welcome to the online version of CSC 156 – Java Computer Science I. Local students should make arrangements to attend an orientation meeting Wednesday evening, August 26 beginning at 8:30 P.M. in room 1836 on the Des Plaines campus. Remote students will receive their information via email during the same time period. At this meeting, we will be able to meet and you will be given the necessary access to the systems. Some of the issues that I've spoken to many of you about include 1) the number of required attendance meetings; 2) the access of course materials and examinations and 3) the use of other Java environments. I would like to take this opportunity to address these.

           The course has a scheduled laboratory meeting in room 1836 DP on Wednesday evenings from 8:30-9:20 P.M. The first meeting on Wednesday, August 26 is required for local students. After that, your attendance is not required as long as your assignments are turned in on their due date. Except for the 3 in-class examinations that are scheduled approximately every 5 weeks, no further attendance is required. Of course, you are always welcome to attend the scheduled evening laboratory session throughout the semester. Exam accommodations for remote students should be arranged with the instructor. Course instructional materials, including quizzes and exercises, are available at the course web site. Compatible browsers for our web sites are described at the following URL: http://www.oakton.edu/online/tech/minspecs.htm

           The OCC system used for instruction operates a variant of the UNIX operating system and supports software that is distributed by the Free Software Foundation and Sun Microsystems. This software is licensed, but there are no fees associated with it. Consequently, we can offer the system and the software to our students over the Internet free of charge. To use the OCC system, you will need access to telnet and ftp utilities. In most cases, these activities can be accomplished through the use of MS Internet Explorer. If you wish to use your own development environment there are two restrictions. First of all, your compiler must support the proposed ANSI Java language that is taught in this course. Secondly, all submitted assignments should be compilable on the OCC academic instructional system. If your program is developed within the proposed ANSI Java language, this should not be a problem. On the other hand, you should avoid the use of any vendor specific commands that are only available to your environment. Specifically, those of you who wish to use the Sun Microsystems SDK should have no problems submitting your programs in this course.

           Please purchase your textbook, Java Programming: From Problem Analysis to Program Design, 3rd edition, by Malik and the accompanying lab manual by Mayfield, Thompson Course Technology, 2007 at any of http://www.oakton.edu/resource/campserv/bookstor.htm (the online OCC Bookstore site) or http://www.amazon.com or the OCC bookstore (in person) before the first class meeting. Also, please send me your email address identifying yourself and your course in a message to somplski@oakton.edu before the first class meeting. Additional questions can be addressed to me at 847-635-1975.

Regards,

Robert Sompolski

Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics