The Fall 2009 offering of CMSC132H will a experimental offering of CMSC 132. Professor Pugh will be leading this experimental offering based on experiences teaching CMSC 132 previously, his past year on sabbatical at Google, and his research and software development experience on the FindBugs and Marmoset projects.
The exact details of the course may be adjusted during the semester; things that aren't working may be be adjusted or replaced. If things don't work out at all, we will adjust to the more standard format for CMSC 132.
In short, the high level goals/changes for the experimental section are:
Class attendance and participation is required and part of your grade. If you miss more than 3 class sessions, you will lose points from your grade. There won't be any distinction between the lecture and lab sections for CMSC 132H. Class is MW 10:00-11:50am, and F 10-10:50am and you are expected to attend the entire class period (e.g., you can't skip the "lab" sections). We realize that there will be occasions when a conflict prevents you from attending class on a particular day, but we expect all students to plan to attend every class, and to inform us in advance when possible if you will not be able to attend a particular class day. There will typically be additional work that must be done before each class (e.g., you won't be able to go for a week where you don't do anything other than come to lecture, and then catch up next week).
The course is not restricted to honors students. There will be discussions of topics outside of the standard curricumum during class, and advanced students will be given opportunities to do alternative challenging individual projects. Professor Pugh is actively engaged in research and has worked with a lot of honors undergraduate students in the past (e.g., Sergey Brin). Honors students are encouraged talk with Professor Pugh outside of class about additional things they can do to further their education (and just chat about what is going on the field and practice of computing and computing science).
While the format of the course will be different than the standard CMSC 132, it will cover the same material and prepare you for future courses.
As warned, this class is a new experimental offering. While I have high hopes for it, I would be surprised if everything works well, and nothing needs to be changed mid-stream. If you are uncomfortable with this, or would prefer more consistency and predictability, I urge you to instead take the standard CMSC 132 offering. -- Bill Pugh