Hello, world!

IntroCS is an introductory course for computer science. The institute for information systems offers the course at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. We tailored the course for the master’s degree program in International Information Systems and therein for students who have little or no background in computer science. The course conveys content of the chair of digital industrial service systems (FAU) and CS50x (Harvard). In this course, we supply students with a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals and computer science discipline.

Students will learn to program in different languages, i.e., C, Python, and JavaScript. We teach fundamentals, including algorithms, abstraction, data structures, graphs theory, and web technologies. By the end of the semester, students will have a richer understanding of the key principles of the discipline of computer science. Students will be able to speak intelligently about how computers work and how they enable us to become better problem-solvers and hopefully communicate that knowledge to others.

This is CS50!

About this course

Learning objectives: After taking this course, students will be able to

  • recognise and deduce patterns among programming problems
  • decompose problems into parts and compose solutions to these
  • operate at multiple levels of abstraction
  • infer from first principles how computer systems work
  • assess correctness, design, and style of code
  • teach yourself new programming languages
  • read code documentation and conclude specifications
  • describe symptoms of problems precisely and ask questions clearly
  • test solutions to problems, find faults and identify corner cases

How to IntroCS?:

  • Lectures: Lecture Videos delivered by the CS50 course from Harvard, Lecture recordings from the previous winter term
  • Shorts: Videos of about 3-30 minutes that dive into a specific topic more deeply.
  • Activation Quizzes: Short quizzes that ask about the theoretical concepts from the lecture, which you can use to test your understanding of the lecture material.
  • Exercises/Preliminary Problems: These problems can be used by the students to get a first contact with the content and its application from the lectures/shorts.
  • Problem Sets: Problem Sets need to be submitted weekly by the students in order to gain Bonus Points.
  • Bonus Points: We grant bonus points for the final examination based on your Problem Set performance.

Section

Every Wednesday at 16:45-18:15 via Teams we offer an online section, that addresses each weeks most important topics. This synchronous on-prem teaching should complement Harvards lecture videos and lets you engage with and ask questions regarding the taught programming paradigms. It is taught by Weixin Wang who also studied at FAU and is now a doctorate candidate at our Chair.

Tutorium

Twice per week, we will answer your individual questions in the Tutorium. One takes place on Thursday from 11:30 - 13:00 @ WiSo (Lange Gasse 20) room LG 0.142. The other takes place Friday 10:00 - 11:30 @ WiSo (Lange Gasse 20) room LG 0.224. The topics of the Tutorium are contingent to previous lectures and sections. Additionally, you can ask questions with regard to problem sets and other exercises. You can ask us to outline concepts in greater detail. Make sure, you use the Tutorium to your advantage! Prepare questions and participate actively to derive the greatest benefit for yourself and others.

Academic Honesty

This course’s philosophy on academic honesty is best stated as “be reasonable.” The course recognizes that interactions with classmates and others can facilitate mastery of the course’s material. However, there remains a line between enlisting the help of another and submitting the work of another. This policy characterizes both sides of that line. The essence of all work that students submit to this course must be their own. Collaboration on problems is not permitted except to the extent that students may ask classmates and others for help so long as that help does not reduce to another doing their work for them. Generally speaking, when asking for help, students may show their code to others, but they may not view their peers’, so long as they respect this policy’s other constraints. Acts considered not reasonable by the course are handled harshly.

Acknowledgement

We thank Harvard’s CS50 for their open course ware.