CS-341 Computer Organization

Section 9TA3 (2283) - Dr. Vickery

Fall 2001

Course Administration

Class Meetings

The class meets in Science Building room B-141 from 9:00 to 10:50 AM on Tuesdays, and from 10:00 to 10:50 AM on Fridays.

Office Hours

Most office hour business can be handled by email. My address is vickery at qc dot edu. Be sure to include "CS-341" in the subject line of every message you send me, and be sure to include your name in the body of each message.

If you want to see me in person, I will be available in my office, Science Building room A-222, for half an hour after each class.

Textbooks

There is one textbook for the course:

Murdocca, Miles J. and Heuring, Vincent P.
Principles of Computer Architecture
Prentice Hall, 2000
ISBN 0-201-43664-7

We will be covering material from chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and Appendices A and B. Reading assignments are on the [ Course Schedule ] web page.

Homework and Exams

There will be several homework assignments, but they will count only 5% of your course grade. That is, if there are ten homework assignments, each one will count 0.5% of your course average.
You must submit your own homework solutions, but you are free to work on the homework assignments with anyone you wish; the idea is to use the homework as a way to reinforce the material in the course, not as a test of your knowledge. I will record whether or not you hand in homeworks by the assigned due dates, but I will not evaluate your homework in any way. Instead, I will send the solutions to you by email after the assignment due date.
There will be two midterm exams and a final exam. The two midterms will count 30% each, and the final will count 35%. Each exam will cover approximately 1/3 of the course (see the [ Course Schedule ] web page for dates), and the final exam will include some reveiw material from earlier parts of the course (about 15% of the exam).
If your lowest exam score is ten points or less below your middle exam score, its weight will be reduced by 10% and the weights of the other two exams will be increased by 5% each.

Check Your Grades

You can check the scores I have recorded for your homework and exams at the [ Check Grades ] web page. To use this facility, you will need to enter your student ID number and a "code word." The code word is like a password, but it is not as secure as a real password because you must tell me what it is in order to set it up. (Never send a real password to anyone, not even a professor!) See [ Homework Assignment 1 ] for details.

Grades become permanent and cannot be changed two weeks after they are posted, so be sure to monitor your grades regularly to be sure they are recorded correctly.