Getting Ready For First Semester!!!!

Everything you need to know about all or the majority of your classes! Most of the courses I took were in the past year, so I doubt the course will have drastic changes but a few things maybe different for you guys!

1. CIS 1500 - Intro to programming

About 90% of you guys will be in CIS 1500, it's the introductory programming class that all the other classes build up on!! You start learning C and if you don't know C, do not worry as they'll teach it from the ground up!! The past semesters had an online book called Zybooks, you pay for the subscription and there are some activities integrated into the context! In the past completing 1 chapter every week rewards you with 1% of your grade, and there were around 10-11 chapters! (So that's 10% of your grade right there!!!) In addition, you would have to buy a raspberry pi!! The school sells them during the first week of school and the TA's and profs mark everything using them, so make sure you always write your programs using it! It's also very important to purchase the pi as your lab exams have to be programmed using your pi!

2. CIS 1250 - Software Design 1

If you're in software engineering this is the beginning of your 5 design courses! When I took this last year, we had to read two books: Subject to change and the design principles. The lectures are about completely different topics such as design processes. In the labs, we used to alternative every week with either a Python lab (very introductory, Luiza does a few lectures introducing Python) or did an application of the design skills we learned in lectures! There were 3 quizzes that were about the books that we were required to read as well.

3. MATH 1200 - Calculus 1

Taught by two of the best math profs at Guelph! For your textbook its a workbook that you can buy at the bookstore for like $40-ish, it has a lot of fill in the blanks and exercises you're supposed to try during the lecture with the profs! There is a warm up test at the end of second (I'm 90% sure) week. Don't stress! It'll be like a review of advanced functions from high school! The course starts with limits and builds onto that so if you missed something from high school calculus, it shouldn't be that big of a problem!

4. MCS 1000 - Introductory marketing

Lauren Wood / The State News

I took this course with no knowledge of any commerce course, A lot of was really interesting! There's an online book you have to buy and complete weekly quizzes (You have to keep answering a question until you get it right!) So as long as you attempt the quizzes, you can easily ace them! The seminars were about creating a company and using what you learned in the lecture to make decisions about what your company did. We had to write 2 reports about our company and what we did and why! For the inclass course, I had a lot of group work, I heard the DE (distance education (online) ) course had more independent work.