The high-order bit is that the quest is only worth 5% of your grade, so don't get too stressed about the exam. We're going to be aiming the difficulty of the exam relatively low, so if you've been coming to class and lab, and doing your homework and readings, you should do quite well.
The quest will be taking place on Monday, September 19, 2011 in lecture. It will be entirely paper-based and no laptops will be allowed. Anything we've done in class or in the readings (except discussions, these vary by TA and are meant for reinforcement of existing content and addressing student questions) is fair game. We usually divide the course (and exam) into two sections:
Approximately half of the points will be from Big Ideas of Computing, and these will most likely be fill-in-the-blank or short response. The other half of the exam will be Programming Concepts, and these will involve debugging short blocks of code, identifying what a provided block or algorithm does, or similar exercises.
Pencils. You will not need a blue book; you'll write in the blanks on the exam paper we'll provide. The exam is closed book, except for one handwritten (double-sided) "study sheet" of paper. On the upcoming midterm, you'll be able to bring two sheets, and on the final, three. All have to be handwritten.
The three best ways to study are to review the materials we've been over (labs, readings, lectures, homework), to attend the review session (below), and to review the Fall 2010 quest:
There will be a review session on Sunday, September 18th, 2011 from 6-9pm in 2050 Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB).