SYLLABUS

CGS-2531 Problem Solving with Computer Software

T4-5, R4 @ CSE 222
Summer 2010

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Course Home Page:

www.cise.ufl.edu/class/cgs2531su10
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/

Insturctor:
Office:
Email:

Office Hours:
Teaching Assistance:
Office:
Email:

Office Hours:
Teaching Assistance:
Office:
Email:

Office Hours:

Jason Yu-Tseh Chi

E309 CSE
ychi@cise.ufl.edu
See course website.
Hengxing Tan
E309 CSE
htan@cise.ufl.edu
See course website.
Zachary Ezzell
E309 CSE
zezzell@cise.ufl.edu
See course website.

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 Pearsons 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 6e, customized package, Pearson, ISBN 0558392342. 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 $90, and consists of:
a. Exploring Office 2007 Vol I, 3/e: Chapters Word 1-4, Excel 1-4, Powerpoint 1-3.
b. Exploring Office 2007 Vol II, 1/e, Chapters Word 5, Excel 5,6
c. Technology in Action, Chapters 2,6,7.
d. PHIT Tips crib sheets for Word, Excel, Powerpoint.
e. Access code to the www.myitlab.com site.
The all-electronic package contains exactly the necessary material.

2.

The paper version of the package is for sale at the UF Bookstore, for approx. $140. It consists of:
a. Exploring Office 2007 Vol I, 3/e: Chapters Word 1-4, Excel 1-4, Powerpoint 1-4, Access 1-4.
b. PHIT Tips for Word, Excel, Powerpoint.
c. Access code to the www.myitlab.com site.
The paper version contains some chapters we wont need (Powerpoint 4, Access 1-4), and doesnt contain
Technology in Action, Word Chapter 5, or Excel Chapters 5-6, which we do need. Watermarked PDF versions
of these will be available on the Myitlab site.

3.

You may assemble the materials from various other sources. New and used versions of the book, as well as
the access code and the PHIT Tips, 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 $65. If you purchase the access code separately (i.e. not through the portal), 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 Windows XP (SP2 or greater) or Windows Vista computer, running Internet Explorer 6,
7 or 8. No other platforms are compatible with myitlab (sorry Mac users). Windows 7 is rumored to work with
Myitlab, but is not yet officially supported. 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:
In the table below, CLASS 1,2, and 3 refer to the first, second and third class meeting of the week.
WEEK
DATES CLAS
Topics
REFERENCE
S

May 10-14

May 17-21

May 24-28

May

31-Jun
4

Jun 7-11

Jun 14-18

Jun 21-25

Jun 28-Jul
2

Jul 5-9

10

Jul 12-16

11

Jul 19-23

12
13

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
Review
EXAM 1 (June 15, Tue)
EXAM 1 (June 15, Tue)
Intro. To Excel

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

Formulas, Page setup

Formulas and Functions
Financial Functions
Charts
Charts
Worksheets and Tables
Worksheets and Tables
Review
EXAM 2 (Jul 15, Thursday)
Data Tables
Data Tables
Pivot Tables and Charts

Jul 26-30

1
2
3

EX-6
EX-6
EX-6

Aug 2-6

1
2
3

Powerpoint Presentation
Development
Review
EXAM 3 (Aug 5, Thursday)

Excel
Excel
Excel
Excel
Excel
Excel
Excel

Ch.
Ch.
Ch.
Ch.
Ch.
Ch.
Ch.

1
2
2
3
3
4
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)

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 youll 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 or PHIT Tips are allowed. Exams will
be during regular class periods on the dates shown above. THESE EXAMS DATES ARE TENTATIVE,
and subject to change based on room availability and potential exam conflicts with other courses.

3. 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, youll 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 serious illness, medical and/or family
emergencies, official UF sponsored events taking place out of town, major religious holidays, and conflicts
with assembly exams in higher-numbered courses. Such justifications MUST be made, in advance, in writing
to the course coordinator. In case of an illness, a doctors note explaining the nature of the condition, the
dates involved, and the expected time of recovery, is required. A doctors note that does not contain ALL these
elements will not be accepted. Students cannot claim theyve been too ill to do their schoolwork, but not ill
enough to go see a doctor or the infirmary. Failure to notify the course coordinator in advance 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. 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.
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 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/instructor 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.
During the exam, you are only allowed to talk to TAs or exam proctors. Talking to anyone else is
considered academic dishonesty.

4. Homework: We are planning on having 10-15 homework assignments (

EACH HOMEWORK IS 3%-4% OF

The following rules apply:
a. Homeworks will be weekly, typically assigned on Tuesdays, and due the following Monday at
11:59:00 p.m.
b. Unsubmitted homework counts as a zero. No late homework is accepted. The deadline for homework
is at 11:59:00 p.m. Eastern Standard/Daylight Time exactly. The deadline is strictly enforced by the
Myitlab site. Exceptions must be justified in advance: the rules are the same as for exams. 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 FINAL GRADE).

c.
d.

e.
f.

g.

h.

i.

j.

k.

your homework will be marked as late and assigned a grade of zero, but the course coordinator will
change it manually.
Before attempting the homework, we recommend you do the exercises on the myitlab site; theyre
there for a reason.
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 havent answered all the questions, its OK to save your homework for later.
No extra credit homework will be assigned, so make sure you do them ALL. Also, no homework
grades will be dropped.
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 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
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.
If youre still working on your assignment with only minutes (or even hours) left until the deadline,
youre asking for trouble (Murphys Law: everything that can go wrong, will go wrong). In
particular, if youre still working on your homework at the deadline, Myitlab will not submit it for you
at 11:59:00 p.m.
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.
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.

5. 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) or Windows Vista computer, running Internet Explorer 6, 7 or 8. No other
platforms are compatible with Myitlab (sorry Mac users). Windows 7 is rumored to work with Myitlab,
but is not yet officially supported. 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 regrading issues must be resolved within 1 week of the due date of the assignment.

6. 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)

7. 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 UFs eLearning websites for this course. Whenever you send email to us, the email must have CGS-2531 as its
subject. Dont 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.

8. Getting help. You can help from friends and each other for your homework assignments, but if someone
else does your assignments, and you dont learn how to do it, you will undoubtedly fail the exams.

9. 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 its 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, 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 wont 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
exam may suffice. For thorough exam preparation, youll need the textbook, whether on paper or the
e-book. If you dont 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 its not required (you can work in one of the
CIRCA labs). Microsoft offers a trial version of Office 2007, good for 60 days.
f. Do I need the PHIT Tips laminated sheets? They are not indispensable, but they are a good tool to
prepare for exams. Remember, we do not allow PHIT Tips, or crib sheets of any kind, in exams.