There will be a web site, a chat group and a wiki used in this class. A cvs repository may also be made available. All of these will be hosted on a server named "mindswap.org" but its installation has been delayed. For now, the class web site will be found at http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler/CMSC828y.
There is no such thing as cheating in this class. Students are encouraged to work together, to get help from students in other classes, to find and use answers from books or web sites, to exchange code freely, and to submit code found on the web and adapted to their needs. I ask that you cite where you get things from (to make it easier for other students to find it as well).
No credit will be taken off for using components or code developed elsewhere. In fact, building your own code from scratch if there is an open source alternative to start from will be frowned upon and likely penalized in grading. (Extra credit may be given for students who make particularly nice use of code found elsewhere.) Pointers to various code repositories and open sources will be available on the class web site to make this easier.
There are no required books for this class. There will be a number of reading assignments, all of which will be found on the web or in easily available library materials.
It will be very useful (maybe made mandatory) to use an internet relay chat for communication with classmates and other researchers/tool developers. Details will become available as to chat location and title, but if you've not used a chat you might want to play with one. If you don't have a chat client on whatever machine you use, you can check out irchelp.org which has pointers to good clients for windows, Mac and Unix, as well as tips on getting started and using IRC.
There is a mistake in the online course schedule. The class is supposed to be scheduled for 5-7PM on Tues and Thurs, not 5-6:15. However, we will only sometimes meet both dates. In weeks where we meet twice, class will be from 5-6:15. On weeks we meet once it will be 5-7:00. In September we will meet both days each week, thereafter the schedule will be announced.
Email is generally the best way to reach me - hendler@cs.umd.edu .
If you need higher bandwidth, I can often be found in the #rdfig chat
which is run by openprojects.org. click here for more info on #rdfig.
I can sometimes be reached by phone - 301-405-2696. If I'm not there you
can leave a message, but you're probably more likely to reach me sooner by
email. I am currently using several different offices, so dropping by my AVW office is typically not a good way to find me, unless you arrange via email first (however, you are welcome to try).
The course will be co-taught with Bijan Parsia, a Faculty Research Associate who is a leader in Semantic Web development and logic on the web. Bijan's office is in the MIND Lab , at 8400 Baltimore Road (1 block North of campus). His email address is currently bparsia@isr.umd.edu but will be moving to a mindswap.org address in the near future. Bijan will be electronically available at the class chat location, again, to be announced once our server is up and running.
(Note: The following is for all CS and ECE students taking this course. Alternatives to some of these assignments may be offered to students for CLIS or other parts of campus)
The following is a tentative list to help you gauge the approximate complexity of the course: