[cs13001] Question about lectures.

[Mikhail Nesterenko]

> Hello Professor Nesterenko,
> 
> I am a first year CS major currently in your CS101 class.  Being a first
> year student I have a question or so regarding your expectations of what we
> should know.  Before a lecture should we be reading our textbook , or is it
> more beneficial to know the presentations well?  I am taking notes in class
> as well , and plan to review those.  I'm just curious how I can best
> prepare myself for our labs as well as quizzes and tests.

There are two aspects to learning the material in CS I: the
fundamental and the practical. The fundamental (what is the terms used
in programming, the names, the approaches, etc.) will be tested on the
quizzes and exams; the practical (how to actually code) will be used in
the lab. You will need to learn both.

For the lecture, you will have to work out what works for you
best. Some people print out the lecture slides (6 or 3 slides per page
to save paper may be useful) that I have online and then, when I talk,
they add notes to the slides. However, my slides tend to contain just
the outline of the material that I cover in class. Therefore, reading
the textbook as we cover the material would be very helpful. I list
the appropriate sections of the textbook next to the slides online.

Preparing for a lecture in advance may be a bit too much
preparation. However, a lot of people found that preparing for a lab
in advance to be quite useful. I'll be opening the lab assignment
about a week before it is taught.

Thanks,
-- 
Mikhail