How to Get the Most Out of Attending Class

Prepare beforehand. Do the assigned reading (see How to Read a Textbook) and write down any questions you have so that you can ask them in class or oce hours. Review your notes from the previous class, and read any handouts that were given out then. Try some exercises, including the suggested one, to get experience writing code and to discover questions that you need to ask. Rather than stopping with a single program, try to nd several dierent ways of coding the solution to each exercise. Work on your course project, and bring along any questions that come up (some of these will be useful for class discussion while others will be better for the two of us to look into during oce hours). Show up. Each credit is costing someone about $1000 in tuition, so youre throwing away real money every time you skip a class. You will learn things from reading the textbook and working on your project, but the classes will clarify and summarize the material and give you an opportunity to ask questions. Show up every time, on time, even if you dont much feel like it. If some compelling reason (e.g., contagious illness) makes it impossible for you to attend a class, see me as soon as possible after to get a copy of the class notes. The handouts from the previous class will always be on the little gray wagon, and they are also in https://www.rpi.edu/AFS/home/51/kupfem3/FP/handouts. Bring what you will need for class: paper to take notes on, a pencil, and a big eraser. It is not necessary to bring your textbook or the notes and handouts from previous classes. None of the classes will make any use of your laptop computer, so you do not need to bring that either except for showing me things before or after class. There is, unfortunately, not enough time in 1 credit for this course to have a lab component. Participate. Most of each class will be devoted to an in-depth review of an example program, driven by questions that students ask. This approach is intended to help you discover the key insights for yourself. If there is something that you dont understand then probably other students are not getting it either, so nobody will think you are stupid for asking a question. If not everyone is following I want to know, so I will always be grateful if you ask me a question. In addition to answering the questions that you ask, I will often call on you by name to answer a question of mine, and you should answer if you can. There is no penalty for giving a wrong answer in class; I will just oer another student a chance. You can take a moment to think over a question before responding or deciding that you dont know the answer. I will wait until it seems clear that youre not going to get it before asking somebody else. In addition to asking your own questions and answering my questions, you should also try to answer questions that other students ask. Ideally each class will be a conversation through which everybody ends up understanding the topic under discussion. Participating will get you into the habit of asking yourself What should I be doing right now to get the most I can out of this class? Even if you are already a very good student, joining in will im-

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prove your focus and comprehension. After the code review I will present a summary of the weeks reading, and hopefully that will elicit further questions about the example program, the textbook chapter, and how the weeks material might relate to your programming project. Take notes. There will be handouts concerning each example program, on which you can take notes based on our conversation about the code, and I will write the chapter outline on the overhead so that you can summarize it in your notes. If youre comfortable with just copying down everything and then trying to gure it out on your own afterward, you can do that as usual in this course. But continuous note-taking might interfere with your ability to participate in the class, so I would like you to try another method instead: Read what I write and listen to what everyone says, but if you dont understand something raise your hand and ask a question about it instead of copying it down. Try to understand the material as it is being discussed, and when you do, summarize the important points in your notes using your own words and diagrams. This way of taking notes will help you to learn and remember the material, and it is much more fun than just copying. If you think you missed something in the process of trying to understand, ask me after class for a xerox of my notes. You will want to study your notes later on to review the material as you work on your project, and you might want to refer to them in the future long after this course is over, so make them neat and orderly. Use a pencil, and make corrections by erasing rather than crossing things out. You will want to integrate your class notes chronologically or by topic with the handouts, the exercises you try, and eventually your programming project, so I suggest you punch everything (dont just poke holes in the pages) and use a looseleaf ring binder to hold and organize all of your papers for the course. You can leave the binder at home when you come to class, and take notes on loose sheets of paper or on a pad from which you can later remove sheets to put in the binder. Follow up. If you leave class with residual questions about the material, or if any occur to you later on, write them down to ask me in oce hours or to bring up at the next class. If the chance arises, talk with other students about the things we discussed, to make sure that you (and they) understand. The best way to learn something is by trying to teach it to someone else.