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Welcome to the Self-Paced Center!

Announcements!

Our hours for Fall 18:
Tues/Thurs 11-5pm, Fri 11-4pm (closed on Mondays and Wednesdays)

If you have any questions contact selfpace@cs.berkeley.edu


Our "entrance quiz" is here If you can easily answer these questions, you have the basic background for our courses.

Introduction

Welcome to the Self Pace Program Fall 18!

A more thorough version of what is listed below can be found here Fall 18 Rules

We offer two different kinds of self-paced courses at the center. The CS9 courses are two-unit P/NP courses for programmers who wish to learn a second language. The CS47B course is a one-unit graded courses meant for those (mostly transfer) students who have completed most (but not all) of the CS61B course through other channels, and wish to complete the requirements for CS61B without taking the entire course.

These courses are "Self-Paced" but they are still serious UC courses, with a high difficulty level and pre-requisites. We know you will have a positive experience learning the languages and enriching your skill sets, but please note that these courses can take up a lot of your time! Please plan accordingly

IMPORTANT NOTE

Our 9 series courses are 2 units. And can have as much work as a 4 unit course. Please keep this in mind when you consider signing up for more than one class. We don’t recommend students with average to heavy course loads take more than one self-pace course at a time.

Location

Our center is located in 200A Sutardja Dai Hall. We will open to students on Monday August 27th, use the entrance via Yali's cafe next door

Hours

Our hours are: Monday-Wed 1-5, Fri 1-4. Also note we stop handing out quizzes the last 30 minutes we are open and don’t start new tutoring sessions the last 15 minutes we are open, even if you are signed up.

Our tutor schedule will be up online soon and will include a link to make appointments with tutors. We are appointment only for tutors

Entrance Quiz

We have an entrance quiz for the CS9 Courses here, every student must self evaulate and take to verify they have the right pre-reqs for a CS9 course. We aren’t trying to be mean, we just want to check if this is the class for you. We have even been told the quiz should be even more challenging. This quiz is for YOU to determine if this course is a fit for you. Not having the pre-requisites and trying to take our courses will set you up for a lot of grief. The current climate as made many students eager to learn programming which is great. But our courses do require pre-requisites. Please note just knowing the basic recursion is not enough to prepare you for our courses. We will stop taking new adds via telebears early 3rd week. So if you are considering switching courses do so before then.

Grading Guidelines

The point breakdown for self-paced courses is as follows:

CS9 courses are graded on a P/NP basis, and you need at least 70% to pass. CS47B uses letter grading on a straight scale (A: 90 - 100%, B: 80 - 89%, etc.).

Assignments

If you have an assignment ready to get graded, meaning you have all what the check list in the assignment requires, check the tutor schedule on our web site to make an appointment to see a tutor for a check off. The tutors prefer to see running programs on your laptops. You can download a compiler to run your program on your own machine. Feel free to ask our staff about this. You will also be offered a computer account to use UCB servers using SSH or terminal on your Mac, if you wish. Feel free to ask us questions about this.

Quizzes

There are also quizzes you take to back up your knowledge. You are allowed to bring in notes during your quiz taking. But no devices are allowed to be used. True, you must have correct answers on all questions on the quiz in order to pass, but retaking quizzes is part of the learning process, and tutors will sometimes allow you to make a change if you made a mental error. Quizzes must be completed in one sitting; they cannot be done as a work in progress. There is a TWO DAY WAIT for retaking quizzes, so it’s of you best interest to only take quizzes when you are prepared. Don’t just take a quiz due to fear of losing pacing points as that strategy, as that will back fire on you. How do you know you are ready? If you did the corresponding program and feel confident. And really there is nothing to be nervous about. If you are working well with the course, the quizzes are just part of the process.

Programs MUST be completed before corresponding quiz can be taken. But you can continue working on programs if you are waiting to retake a quiz, in fact we encourage that. For Assignments, you must have your code and test cases showing correctness ready to be examined for the tutor to grade before the grading session in order to pass.

Pacing Points and Deadlines

Everyone will start the semester with 20 pacing points. This semester students will be setting up their own course work deadlines -for information about this ask the staff at the SP Center or write to us