Practicals for IT@JCU CP1404/CP1804/CP5632

This repository contains Python code and instructions for practicals for the subjects CP1404, CP1804 and CP5632 at James Cook University.

Many files contain # TODO comments, which are part of the instructions for what students need to do.
Complete instructions are found in each prac folder.

Solutions

Selected practical solutions are provided here, in the "solutions" branch.
These are to help you learn by evaluating your own work and seeing our suggested ways of solving the practical problems.

Important: Please use the solutions in a mature and honest way, as helpful learning tools... after you complete your own work, not as something to simply copy into your own prac work. OK?
Seriously, never copy the solutions as this will not help you learn as much as doing your own coding.

Practical Content

Practical numbers do not necessarily correspond to weeks. E.g. some subject offerings run in 10 weeks, some in 13 weeks.

Practicals are assessed

You should aim to complete the work in the practical session, but you have one additional week to complete each of these tasks and still earn your mark. If you do not finish a practical in the scheduled week, you can still get full marks if you show it to your practical supervisor at the start of the next practical. After that, it's too late.

Assessment will be based on completing the tasks up to but not including the practice/extension section to a satisfactory standard (not getting everything correct). You will be marked as follows:

not attempted at all
some of the work attempted with minimal effort
some of the work attempted with reasonable effort
most or all of the work successfully attempted

Note that to get full marks, you must have attempted every part of every question. Make sure you read the questions carefully, and do everything required.

Internal students: Please have all of your tasks open and ready to show your tutor when it's time to get marked.

There are online tests available through LearnJCU that also contribute to your practical mark. See the subject outline for details of how tests are marked. We recommend doing each test before you start your practical work, and you must complete it by the due date to get your marks for it.

Structure

Each practical is usually structured in multiple parts:

Part 1 is usually a walkthrough or a warm up that should not take long but shows you working code (which you can reference and learn from),
Part 2 is usually a "fill-in-the-blanks" where you must do a small task, mostly modifying existing code,
and Part 3 is usually a "do-from-scratch" exercise where you do the whole task with the benefit of having completed the earlier parts.
The practice/extension section provides further challenges for you to practise and extend your programming skills. (You do not need to complete these sections for your prac marks.)

Important: You should not expect to learn and do well in this subject if you only do the minimum contact hours (like just these pracs). You need to be practising and revising your programming regularly multiple times every week. You can find even more practice projects at https://github.com/CP1404/Starter/wiki/Practice-Programming-Projects
Some students have found benefit from doing extra online courses like the video-based ones at LinkedIn Learning

All code for pracs can be found here at https://github.com/CP1404/Practicals - Many of these files have # TODO comments to highlight what steps to do.
You may want to download or clone the practicals repository... but we don't expect you to know how to use GitHub yet, as we will teach you that in a couple of weeks.

Save your practical work

You need to save your work from every prac. Keep every file/script you write.
We suggest you use a USB disk and cloud storage (like OneDrive) and organise it using folders, like CP1404/practicals/prac_01.
After we learn to use GitHub, your practicals will also be stored in a public GitHub repository.

Give each file a logical name so you can find it again. Also, when you need to make changes to an existing script for a separate question, make a copy of the old question first so you have a record of everything. Don't save your work to the JCU computers' local drives, but into your own storage area. You can use the local hard drive for temporary storage, then move your work onto your disk or cloud storage.