Working practices
Keep trying things out
When reading the materials, try out all the examples and search for more information online. In this course, learning about programming languages goes hand in hand with programming.
Research on learning has shown over and over again that distributed practice, i.e. dividing your work over multiple days, leads to better learning outcomes than massed practice.
Coursework
The course materials include graded quizzes, programming assignments, and an end-of-course project. Trying out the examples helps you in solving the programming assignments. After completing the end-of-course project, you will review your own project and a handful of projects from other course participants.
For Aalto University students, the course also has an end-of-course exam. More details on the exam are available in Aalto MyCourses.
Programming assignments in the early parts of the course are worked on in this online environment, which has embedded programming environments. The assignments are auto-graded.
For larger assignments and the end-of-course project, you are expected to have a local programming environment for testing. At that point, possible template code is given as zip-files and assignments are returned as zip-files.
Academic integrity
The coursework is to be completed individually. Sharing your solutions with others is strictly forbidden.
As the coursework have been created to help everyone learn, do not take away that opportunity. Do not share your solutions to the coursework or store them in any publicly available location.
All submitted coursework is also periodically checked for plagiarism. Plagiarism, i.e. representing the work of others as your work, will naturally lead to a failed course and other ramifications. For further details, see Aalto University Code of Academic Integrity and Handling Violations Thereof.
Use of generative AI
Learning takes effort. Generative AI tools have been shown to be useful for learning, especially when you know what you are doing, and explicitly focus on making sure that you learn the content and practices that the tools are helping you with. At the same time, such tools can also be used to avoid learning, if you do not pay attention to what you are doing.
In this course, the use of generative AI and large language models for assisting with the coursework is allowed. This includes tools such as Github Copilot and ChatGPT. If you do not have access to a generative AI assistant, the platform provides an assistant. You can find it on the lower right corner of the material pages when logged in — clicking it opens up a chat.
The course staff will not provide support for using generative AI assistants, and any help requests related to issues from using them may be completely skipped. For more details, see support and discussion.