Sessions and support

Course versions

There are three versions of this course: in block 1, FEB22012 Programmeren and FEB22012X Programming is meant for second year Bachelor students in the . FEB61003 Programming (SPOC) runs in blocks 2, 3 and 4 and is meant for Premaster students. The main difference between the courses is that FEB61003 is designed to be a self-study course, where the examination through exercises differs and the exam is mainly conducted via an online-proctored exam.

For details regarding the organisation of these different courses we refer you to their respective Canvas pages:

Who is teaching? (FEB22012 and FEB22012X)

Paul Bouman: Course Organization, Lectures, Exam and Assignments

Contact us via eb-feb22012@ese.eur.nl. This will get you a faster response than sending e-mails to our personal mailboxes, as more people will keep an eye on the course e-mail. Course related e-mails in my personal mailbox will get very low priority.

Teaching Assistants (2024-2025) in the Tutorials of FEB22012 and FEB22012X:

Anna del Pozo
Bogdan Ene
Borg Knijnenburg
Erwin van der Bij
Liselot Goossen
Paulo de Souza Miranda

Who is teaching? (FEB61003)

Paul Bouman: Course Organization, Lectures and Assignments
Khue Nguyen: General Support, Answering Questions

Contact us via eb-feb61003@ese.eur.nl. If you have questions related to the course, its contents or want to make an appointment via either online or in person, please feel free to reach out to this mailbox.

Support

Support for this course will mainly be provided through scheduled sessions and if necessary via e-mail. For an overview of when the sessions take place, see the online timetable:

Communcation and Netiquette

Since some things are still uncertain and part of the activities take place online, it is important that we agree on a set of rules that make the education go as smooth and pleasant as possible. Within this course we have the following rules:

Keep track of the announcements on Canvas. If important things change within how the course is run, this will always be communicated via the announcements.
Always send e-mails to this course using your student e-mail and sent them to the course e-mail. We are not obliged to answer e-mails that do not follow this rule.
Personal questions, including those related to your work on the assignments, should be asked in person during on-campus sessions or via e-mail to the e-mail box of your course. Never ask personal questions within public channels as others will be able to read this and may plagiarize your code.
Be active during the tutorial: add remarks, ask questions, participate in group discussions.

How to study

Lecture videos emphasize important theory. Before or afterwards you can read about this material on the website. In FEB22012 and FEB22012X you can use tutorials to get help and ask questions about the assignments while working on them. In FEB61003 there are question hours available by request via e-mail. Also, in order to be succesful in the assignments, it is vital to use the automated feedback provided by Codegrade. It is therefore important to start working on assignments early, so you have enough time to process the feedback. This also allows you to ask specific questions if you are attending tutorials. Assignments that are not able to pass the automated feedback do not get points. When working on assignments, make sure you understand how the discussed theory is brought to practice. This is important for the exam. There are some self checks on the different pages of this website that can also be used to prepare for the exam. There are also practice exams available.

Within this course, the goal is to increase your programming skill through experience, and equip you with abstractions and concepts that make it easier to write larger and more complicated programs, or write programs that make use of existing large and complicated programs, such as advanced statistical methods, machine learning and mathematical programming tools. To achieve this you should spend quite a bit of time working on the assignments to gain this experience. The assignments are carefully designed to ensure you have to apply most of the theory you are required to learn for the exam of this course. As such, you can be much more effective during your work on the assignments if you study the theory you are supposed to apply.

We suggest that early in each week, preferably on Monday or Tuesday, you watch the video lectures. Before or afterwards you can read the material on the website. Most of the topics on the website have "Test your Knowledge" quizzes at the end of the content. These can be used to practice with more theoretical types of questions you can also expect for the exam.

During tutorials within the non-SPOC versions of this course you can get help and ask questions about the assignments while working on them. Also, make use of the continuous feedback provided by Codegrade. It is very unlikely you have addressed all edges cases on your first attempt, and it is expected you need to fix your code. This type of debugging is also a vital skill when later you do not have access to automated tests in Codegrade.

When working on assignments, make sure you understand how the discussed theory is brought to practice. This is important for the exam of FEB22012 and FEB22012X. This year, we introduce a page with some learning questions, that can help you think about how you are applying the theory from the lecture during your assignment work. You do not need to hand in the answers to the learning questions.

While working on the assignments, you will run into many errors and mistakes. Often, such moments are when you can learn a lot, as resolving them will result in important AHA moment. If you are already able to write all programs without any mistakes you would not need this course. However, such situations can also make you feel frustrated or feel insecure. When that happens, it is often a good idea to take a short break away from the computer. In order to allow yourself sufficient time for such breaks, it is important to start early and plan to have multiple moments to work on the assignment and avoid doing everything one day before the deadline. Also, avoid that you struggle for days on the same problem. If you feel you struggled a long time on the same issue, please contact us via e-mail on eb-feb22012@ese.eur.nl.