A+ will be down for a version upgrade on Thursday October 17th 2024 at 09:00-12:00.
This course has already ended.

The latest instance of the course can be found at: O1: 2024

Luet oppimateriaalin englanninkielistä versiota. Mainitsit kuitenkin taustakyselyssä osaavasi suomea. Siksi suosittelemme, että käytät suomenkielistä versiota, joka on testatumpi ja hieman laajempi ja muutenkin mukava.

Suomenkielinen materiaali kyllä esittelee englanninkielisetkin termit. Myös suomenkielisessä materiaalissa käytetään ohjelmien koodissa englanninkielisiä nimiä kurssin alkupään johdantoesimerkkejä lukuunottamatta.

Voit vaihtaa kieltä A+:n valikon yläreunassa olevasta painikkeesta. Tai tästä: Vaihda suomeksi.


Lab Sessions

There are several lab sessions every day except on weekends, from the afternoon of September 9th onwards. This is where you can come to discuss programming with the course staff and get help on the assignments. Due to the pandemic, the Fall 2020 “lab sessions” will be implemented at distance using Zoom. For the exact schedule and instructions on how to join, see below on this page.

Aalto students only, sorry!

Because of the exceptional circumstances this year, the “lab sessions” described on this page are only open to students with an Aalto user account. If the situation permits, we may choose to open some of the sessions to other students as well, in which case we’ll announce that separately. The Piazza forum serves all students including those external to Aalto.

The sessions start a quarter past the indicated hour, but you can come and go as you please. There’s no set agenda: you can ask for help as the need arises, and the teaching assistants will advise you individually.

Participation is voluntary but highly recommended. You don’t need to — and can’t — sign up in advance.

The assistants can help you in English, Finnish, and (in some sessions) Swedish.

Time Dates Teaching assistants present
Mon 8–10 Sep 14th to Dec 7th, 2020 Pyry Ruotsalainen, Sergey Zakuraev
Mon 10–12 Sep 14th to Dec 7th, 2020 Kaarlo Liukkonen, Mathilda Smith, Matthew Higgins
Mon 12–14 Sep 14th to Dec 7th, 2020 Mira Keränen (also in Swedish), Sonja Tervola, Ville Pihlava
Mon 14–16 Sep 14th to Dec 7th, 2020 Otso Koiso-Kanttila, Mathilda Smith, Sonja Tervola, Veera Alt
Mon 16–18 Sep 14th to Dec 7th, 2020 Into Pääkkönen, Matthew Higgins, Veera Alt
Mon 18–20 Sep 14th to Dec 7th, 2020 Niklas Kröger
Tue 8–10 Sep 15th to Dec 8th, 2020 Matthew Higgins, Sergey Zakuraev, Tuukka Jaakkola
Tue 10–12 Sep 15th to Dec 8th, 2020 Kaarlo Liukkonen, Markus Enroth, Pyry Ruotsalainen, Ville Pihlava
Tue 12–14 Sep 15th to Dec 8th, 2020 Balázs Nagyváradi, Into Pääkkönen, Anna Nikander, Tuukka Jaakkola
Tue 14–16 Sep 15th to Dec 8th, 2020 Otso Koiso-Kanttila, Kirill Enckell, Konsta Olkkonen, Linnea Risku
Tue 16–18 Sep 15th to Dec 8th, 2020 Joonatan Honkamaa, Konsta Olkkonen, Markus Enroth, Sanna Alander
Tue 18–20 Sep 15th to Dec 8th, 2020 Nikolas Drosdek, Sergey Zakuraev
Wed 8–10 Sep 16th to Dec 9th, 2020 Cedric Neergaard (also in Swedish), Joel Lahenius, Sanna Alander
Wed 10–12 Sep 16th to Dec 9th, 2020 Linnea Risku, Mira Keränen (also in Swedish), Vinh Nguyen
Wed 14–16 Sep 9th to Dec 2nd, 2020 Vinh Nguyen (English only)
Wed 16–18 Sep 9th to Dec 2nd, 2020 Kristiina Suojanen (also in Swedish)
Thu 10–12 Sep 10th to Dec 3rd, 2020 Joel Lahenius
Thu 12–14 Sep 10th to Dec 3rd, 2020 Cedric Neergaard (also in Swedish)
Thu 14–16 Sep 10th to Dec 3rd, 2020 Balázs Nagyváradi (English only)
Thu 16–18 Sep 10th to Dec 3rd, 2020 Kristiina Suojanen (also in Swedish)
Fri 10–12 Sep 11th to Dec 4th, 2020 Kirill Enckell
Fri 12–14 Sep 11th to Dec 4th, 2020 Balázs Nagyváradi (English only)
Fri 14–16 Sep 11th to Dec 4th, 2020 Vinh Nguyen (English only)
Fri 16–18 Sep 11th to Dec 4th, 2020 Anna Nikander

“Lab Sessions” on Zoom in Fall 2020

In Fall 2020, the “lab sessions” will take the form of Zoom video calls where students can discuss their program individually with a teaching assistant. We’ll use A+’s Lab Queue feature to allocate turns to each student (or pair of students).

If you are unfamiliar with Zoom, please try it out well in advance before joining one of the “labs”.

Setting up Zoom

Install Zoom on your computer as per Aalto’s Zoom Quick Guide.

Zoom may be initially configured to mute any teaching assistants that enter your Zoom meetings. Please ensure that this is not the case:

  1. Go to aalto.zoom.us and log in with your Aalto account.
  2. In the left-hand menu, choose Settings.
  3. Scroll down until you find Mute participants upon entry. Make sure that the setting is not enabled.

Test your video and audio in advance to make sure they’re working in Zoom.

Joining a “lab session”

You don’t have to (and can’t) sign up in advance. When you want to talk to a teaching assistant, do the following.

Before you join the queue, start a Zoom meeting:

  1. Open Zoom and select New Meeting.
  2. Select Join with Computer Audio. Your meeting is now active but with only you as a participant. Others can join if they have an invite link, more on which below.

With the Zoom meeting running, enter the Lab Queue:

  1. Make sure that the program, ebook page, or other material that you wish to discuss is ready for viewing on your computer.
  2. Here in A+, select Lab Queue in the menu.
  3. The Lab Queue prompts you for a video link. Put in the invite link from Zoom. You can copy this link to your clipboard by selecting, in Zoom, Participants → Invite → Copy invite link.
    • If you’re working together with a pair, make sure to share the link with them, too, so that you’re both present when the assistant joins the meeting.
  4. In the drop-down menu, select which language you’d prefer to be advised in.
  5. Confirm the selections, and you’re in the queue. An assistant will join your Zoom meeting sooner or later, depending on the length of the queue.

Especially when the queue is long, the assistant cannot spend very long in one meeting. For that reason, too, please be prepared when it’s your turn!

Screen-sharing and mics on Zoom

In order to help you, the assistant will typically need to see the program that you’re working on. You can share your computer’s screen with the assistant by selecting, at Zoom’s bottom edge, Share → Screen and confirming with Share.

In Zoom’s bottom-left corner, there’s a little microphone symbol. Check to see that your microphone isn’t muted; or if it is, click the symbol or press Alt + A. If you can’t hear the assistant, make sure they aren’t muted by checking Participants at Zoom’s bottom edge. When you mouse over the assistant’s name in that list, you’ll see a Mute/Unmute button. While resolving audio trouble, you can resort to Zoom’s textual Chat, too.

Feedback

Credits

Thousands of students have given feedback that has contributed to this ebook’s design. Thank you!

The ebook’s chapters, programming assignments, and weekly bulletins have been written in Finnish and translated into English by Juha Sorva.

The appendices (glossary, Scala reference, FAQ, etc.) are by Juha Sorva unless otherwise specified on the page.

The automatic assessment of the assignments has been developed by: (in alphabetical order) Riku Autio, Nikolas Drosdek, Joonatan Honkamaa, Jaakko Kantojärvi, Niklas Kröger, Teemu Lehtinen, Strasdosky Otewa, Timi Seppälä, Teemu Sirkiä, and Aleksi Vartiainen.

The illustrations at the top of each chapter, and the similar drawings elsewhere in the ebook, are the work of Christina Lassheikki.

The animations that detail the execution Scala programs have been designed by Juha Sorva and Teemu Sirkiä. Teemu Sirkiä and Riku Autio did the technical implementation, relying on Teemu’s Jsvee and Kelmu toolkits.

The other diagrams and interactive presentations in the ebook are by Juha Sorva.

The O1Library software has been developed by Aleksi Lukkarinen and Juha Sorva. Several of its key components are built upon Aleksi’s SMCL library.

The pedagogy of using O1Library for simple graphical programming (such as Pic) is inspired by the textbooks How to Design Programs by Flatt, Felleisen, Findler, and Krishnamurthi and Picturing Programs by Stephen Bloch.

The course platform A+ was originally created at Aalto’s LeTech research group as a student project. The open-source project is now shepherded by the Computer Science department’s edu-tech team and hosted by the department’s IT services. Markku Riekkinen is the current lead developer; dozens of Aalto students and others have also contributed.

The A+ Courses plugin, which supports A+ and O1 in IntelliJ IDEA, is another open-source project. It was created by Nikolai Denissov, Olli Kiljunen, and Nikolas Drosdek with input from Juha Sorva, Otto Seppälä, Arto Hellas, and others.

For O1’s current teaching staff, please see Chapter 1.1.

Additional credits for this page

Niklas Kröger wrote the instructions for Zoom labs, drawing on similar guides by Mikko Kivelä and Kerttu Pollari-Malmi; Juha Sorva translated the instructions to English.

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