Course Information¶

Course Staff¶

Instructors: Brett Wortzman, Matt Wang

Instructor Email: cse121-instructors@cs.washington.edu

Registration Questions: CSE Advisers (ugrad-adviser@cs.washington.edu)

Course Staff and Support Hours: Course Staff and Office Hours

Prior Experience and Expectations¶

Prerequisite Material

To better assess if CSE 121 is the right class for you, the Allen School has developed a Self-Guided Placement to help students assess which intro course is the right one for them to enroll in. Please see this website for more information on who to contact if you have questions about which introductory CSE course is the right course for you.

Programming Language

CSE 121 is taught in the Java programming language. No prior experience in Java is required.

Learning Objectives¶

CSE 121 is designed around a set of 7 learning objectives. At the end of the course, successful students will be able to do the following:

1. Create an algorithm to solve a given problem and express that algorithm in a structured way (e.g. pseudocode)
2. Trace and predict the behavior and results of Java code that uses basic control structures and data abstractions
3. Write functionally correct and maintainable Java code using basic control structures, primitive data types, and basic data abstractions that meets a provided specification and conforms to provided guidelines for style and implementation
4. Clearly and effectively describe and document the behavior of Java code
5. Identify and enumerate a set of inputs or tests to determine the correctness of a Java program
6. Identify and fix errors in Java code
7. Describe the ethical and social impacts of technology and explain how our choices as programmers can influence these impacts

Course Climate¶

Inclusion¶

All students are welcome in CSE 121 and are entitled to be treated respectfully by both classmates and the course staff. We strive to create a challenging but inclusive environment that is conducive to learning for all students. If at any time you feel that you are not experiencing an inclusive environment, or you are made to feel uncomfortable, disrespected, or excluded, please report the incident so that we may address the issue and maintain a supportive and inclusive learning environment. You may contact the course staff or the CSE academic advisors to express your concerns. Should you feel uncomfortable bringing up an issue with a staff member directly, you may also consider sending anonymous feedback or contacting the UW Office of the Ombud.

Extenuating Circumstances: “Don’t Suffer in Silence”¶

We recognize that our students come from varied backgrounds and can have widely-varying circumstances. We also acknowledge that the circumstances of this particular quarter may bring unique challenges. If you have any unforeseen circumstances that arise during the course, please do not hesitate to contact the course staff or the instructors to discuss your situation. The sooner we are made aware, the more easily we can provide accommodations.

Typically, extenuating circumstances include work-school balance, familial responsibilities, health concerns, or anything else beyond your control that may negatively impact your performance in the class. Additionally, while some amount of “productive struggle” is healthy for learning, you should ask the course staff for help if you have been stuck on an issue for a very long time.

Life happens! While our focus is providing an excellent educational environment, our course does not exist in a vacuum. Our ultimate goal as a course staff is to provide you with the ability to be successful, and we encourage you to work with us to make that happen.

Disabilities¶

Your experience in this class should not be negatively-affected by any disabilities that you may have. The Disability Resources for Students (DRS) office can help you establish accommodations with the course staff.

If you have already established accommodations with DRS, please communicate your approved accommodations to the lecturer at your earliest convenience so we can discuss your needs in this course.

If you have not yet established services through DRS, but have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodations (conditions include but not limited to: mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts), you are welcome to contact DRS. DRS offers resources and coordinates reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities and/or temporary health conditions.

Reasonable accommodations are established through an interactive process between you, your lecturer(s) and DRS. It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create inclusive and accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law.

Religious Accommodations¶

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

Software and Textbooks¶

Most of this course will be run on EdStem - this includes readings, notes, exercises, and assignments. You can develop your programs in EdStem itself (online), or set up an environment to work directly on your device.

For more details, visit the software setup page.

There is no required textbook for CSE 121. All of our readings are available for free on Ed. If you would like a textbook as an additonal resource, we recommend Building Java Programs by Reges and Stepp (5^th Edition).

Class Sessions and Quiz Sections¶

Class Sessions¶

To best support your learning in CSE 121 this quarter, we will be using a hybrid classroom model. This will mean our class time will be a mix of time for lecture and time for students to collaboratively work on activities. Time in class spent on students actively participating in their learning has been shown numerous times to improve learning outcomes for students. (Email the instructors if you’re interested in reading about these studies.)

To ensure there is time in class for these opportunities for active practice, we will also ask you to prepare to come to class each day by completing a pre-class reading each day of class. The readings will have a mix of reading slides (often complemented by a video) and questions to let you practice the material you read. The readings/exercises should take about 30 minutes and should be completed before class for that day. The class sessions will begin where the pre-class reading left off after a brief review of the reading.

Class sessions will be hosted in person. A “normal” day of class will be composed of some recap of the lesson you read before class and alternating time for group work and discussing applications of those concepts as a whole class. The class sessions will be recorded so students who cannot attend can view them later. We do not take attendance, but expect students to be attending to participate in in-class activities, or watching the recordings in the off-chance they can’t attend class.

If you are sick, you should not attend lecture.

Quiz Sections¶

Quiz sections are smaller, TA-run sessions where students work in groups on practice problems and review concepts from the previous day’s class session.

Quiz sections meet on Tuesdays/Thursdays according to the time you registered for. Whenever possible, please attend your assigned quiz section. However, if you need to attend a different quiz section on occasion, please reach out to the TA whose section you are visiting ahead of time to request permission.

Quiz sections will not be recorded. Instead, the course staff will post all materials used in section on the course website and will also occasionally post helpful videos covering some of the topics covered in section that day. So, anything missed by not being able to attend in person, you will be able to find asynchronously on the course website.

If you are sick, you should not attend quiz section.

Course Work¶

Assignments¶

There will be six types of course work assigned in CSE 121.

Pre-class Work (daily, ~16 total)¶

Short assignments consisting of readings, tutorials, and practice problems for new concepts that will be discussed in the corresponding lesson. Generally, these assignments will be your first introduction to a concept, and we will expect that you have completed at least the reading prior to class. Note that, while we will not explicitly review the topics covered in pre-class work during class, we do not expect you to fully master the material just from these assignments– that will take additional instruction and practice in class.

Pre-class work is not graded, though we will conduct class assuming you have completed the required work for that day.

Post-section Work (daily, ~16 total)¶

After (almost) each section, you will submit a form response and/or a small set of problems. These will be assessed on a mix of effort/completion and correctness, though our primary emphasis will be on effort. These will not be a specific portion of your grade; however, they will be an important way to review and summarize your learning from that day and help you identify any areas where you need additional work.

Students who make at least 10 (out of 16 total) submissions will be granted an extra resubmission.

Creative Projects (~biweekly, 4 total)¶

Medium to large assignments in which you will practice your programming skills. Creative projects will usually include a basic set of instructions to get you started followed by open-ended guidelines for extending, expanding, or modifying your work in a manner of your choosing. These assignments are intended to allow you to explore and discover both the programming skills being practiced and your own interests within the world of computer science.

Programming Assignments (~biweekly, 4 total)¶

Longer programming assignments that will assess your proficiency with the skills and concepts covered in class. While programming assignments will typically emphasize content introduced shortly before their release, they will often integrate content from earlier in the course as well. Programming assignments will be more structured and have more specific requirements than creative projects, but will still often include smaller open-ended components.

Quizzes (~triweekly, 3 total)¶

Collections of short, independent problems completed in section on the assigned day. Quiz problems will take a variety of forms, and will assess course learning objectives. Each quiz will generally focus on content introduced since the last quiz, but may include any content previously covered. Quizzes will be taken during your quiz section on a device and will be timed for 45 minutes. Each quiz’s content will be randomly generated from an equivalent set of problems so there is no benefit to taking a quiz later in the day than someone else. Quizzes will be considered open note and open internet, but you should complete all quiz problems individually without communicating with others or misusing tools (and in particular, the academic honesty policy still applies). You will need to bring a laptop or other computing device to section on quiz days – please contact the course staff immediately if that will not be possible to make alternate arrangements.

Final Exam (during Finals Week, 1 total)¶

Similar to quizzes, but with more problems and assessing all content from the course. Unlike quizzes, the final exam will be conducted on paper. Additional details on exam logistics will be posted closer to the end of the quarter.

The final exam will be held on Wednesday, December 11^th from 12:30-2:20 in KNE 120 and 130.

Please reach out to Brett & Matt as soon as possible if you cannot take the final exam in-person on the assigned date!

Resubmissions¶

Learning from mistakes is an important part of mastering any skill, especially for novices. To enable this, you are allowed to revise and resubmit your work on programming assignments and creative projects to demonstrate improved mastery after your initial submission, and these grades will fully replace the previous grades.

See Resubmissions for details and rules.

Late or Missed Work¶

In CSE 121, we do not generally accept late work. If you are unable to turn in an assignment by its initial submission deadline, you will be able to use one of the weekly resubmissions in future weeks to turn in the assignment.

Quizzes must be completed during the scheduled times (usually in your regular quiz section). If you are unable to attend section on a quiz day due to extenuating circumstances (see below) please reach out to Brett & Matt immediately.

Please see the policy on Extenuating Circumstances for more information.

Getting Help¶

Having questions or getting stuck on something is entirely expected in the learning process. If you find something challenging with your studies, that is a sign you are learning! Learning is not something that you need to do alone though! In fact, connecting with your peers or asking a member of the course staff for help can add extreme depth to your knowledge.

• Synchronous Help (Office Hours): One place to go to get help is our Office Hours hosted throughout the week. TAs staff office hours for many hours a day to provide you the help you need when you need it! This is a great place to go if you want to review a particular course concept, work on a practice problem with the help of a TA or your peers, or get help on a Creative Project or Programming Assignment if you are running into difficulties.

  Tip

  A common misconception is that you can only go to office hours with specific homework questions. That is not true! If you have any questions about course concepts (e.g., from class that day), you are super encouraged to go work on that concept with a member of the course staff at office hours! Getting help with a concept earlier, when you first are feeling unsure, is much better than saving it until you need it on the homework.

• Asynchronous Help (Ed Discussion): With a class of our size, directly emailing a member of the course staff is not always recommended. There are many of you and only few of us, so if you email one person directly we can’t make a guarantee how quickly we can respond! To alleviate this one-on-one communication of email, we have a course discussion board that will be a much more lively place for discussion and a way to make sure you can are helped more quickly. The message board is set up so that all of the course staff can help you, which will make it more likely for you to receive a quicker response!

  Ed Tips

  • If you are asking a general question about the course logistics or content, you can make a public post. This way other students can benefit from seeing your question, and you can even answer each other’s questions to share your perspectives!
    • If you want, you can choose to post anonymously so that other students in the course can’t see your name. Note that anonymous posting does not hide your identity from the course staff.
  • You’re encouraged to answer each other’s questions as well! Explaining a topic to someone else (even on a discussion board) is a great way to help you better understand the material. The course staff will still look over student answers and can nicely point out some misconception if there is one so that everyone benefits.
  • If you have a question that’s pretty specific to your homework solution, or, is about some personal details that you would not want to share with the class (e.g., DRS accommodations), you can make a private post on Ed that is only visible to the course staff. This way, any member of the staff can respond to get you the help you need!
  • For sensitive matters that you only want to discuss with Brett & Matt, you can instead email Brett & Matt if that makes you feel more comfortable. Note that the response time for the instructors’ email is longer than posting on the Ed board.

Grades¶

Grading Scale¶

Work in CSE 121 will be graded using the following scale:

It is important to note that, under this system, it is the work that is assessed as a proxy for the student. This is an imperfect system, but is necessary to manage a course of the size and scale of CSE 121. It is in your best interest to ensure that your work accurately reflects your proficiency by being careful and diligent in following instructions, meeting deadlines, and understanding requirements.

On occasion, a grade of U (Unassessable) may be given for work that does not enable a proper assessment of the assignment’s learning goals. This may include, but is not limited to, work that is missing, does not demonstrate meaningful effort, does not provide enough evidence to determine proficiency, uses disallowed features or concepts, or violates other major course rules.

Assignment Grading Schemes¶

• Pre-class Work: Pre-class work is not graded.
• Post-section Work: Post-section work is not graded, but is evaluated on correctness and/or effort for credit towards an additional resubmission.
• Creative Projects: Each creative project will be assigned one ESN grade.
• Programming Assignments: Each programming assignment will be assigned four ESN grades.
• Quizzes/Final Exam: Each problem on a quiz or the final exam will be assigned a single ESN grade. Across the 3 quizzes and the final exam there will be 15 total graded questions (9 from quizzes and 6 from the final exam).

Course Grades¶

Course grades will be computed as follows:

1. Base grade: Identify the highest minimum grade for which the student meets all requirements (see below).
2. Additional S+’s and E’s: Count the number of additional S+’s and E’s beyond the requirements for the base grade identified in the previous step.
3. Adjustment: Multiply each of the above counts by a multiplier and add the result to the base grade. Additional S+’s and E’s may each use a different multiplier. These multipliers will be determined by the course staff at the end of the quarter and will not be published.

Minimum requirements for each grade are below. Note that all requirements for a particular grade must be met to guarantee that minimum, though failing to do so does not mean that grade cannot be earned.

To be guaranteed a particular minimum grade, all requirements for that grade must be met. Failing to meet any of the requirements for a particular minimum grade does not preclude the possibility of receiving that grade, but does mean that grade cannot be guaranteed. Estimates of students’ final grades beyond the requirements listed above will not be provided before final grades are released.

Academic Honesty and Collaboration¶

This policy applies to all graded work; that is:

• Creative Projects
• Programming Assignments
• Post-section work
• Reflections
• Resubmissions
• Quizzes
• Final Exam

Unless otherwise specified, all graded work must be completed individually, and AI tools (such as ChatGPT, CoPilot, Gemini, etc.) should not be used on graded work in any way.

In particular, all graded work must abide by these rules:

• Do not share solution code with, or view solution code from, any sources, including but not limited to fellow students, prior students, tutors, or the internet.
• Do not provide or receive detailed guidance on, such as being “walked through” or “walking someone through”, how to implement any part of a graded assignment to or from anyone who is not a member of the course staff.
• Do not provide or view samples of code that are intended to solve any specific part of a graded assignment’s specification, unless the samples are included in course-provided or course-linked materials.
• Do not use AI on graded work in any capacity (including but not limited to generating or editing either code or text)
• Do not use forbidden features in graded work, even if you have learned about them from resources that are non-course provided or by working on non-graded work with other people or AI
• If you choose to utilize a feature that is not forbidden but is not taught in class in your graded work, you should be prepared to explain, in detail, why you chose to use that feature and how it enhances your code beyond what would have been possible using only features taught in class.
  • Being able to explain your code does not guarantee it does not violate this policy, but failing to be able to explain it greatly increases the chances of a violation.

All potential violations of this policy will be reported to the office of Community Standards & Student Conduct for formal investigation. Students found responsible for violations will receive no credit for the assignment(s) on which the policy was violated, and will lose the ability to resubmit that assignment.

Productive Collaboration¶

When you or a friend needs help on graded work, here are some ways you can collaborate that are most likely not in violation of our policies:

• Reference course-provided or course-linked resources for help and guidance
  • Code Quality Guide for code formatting and style
  • Commenting Guide for comment formatting and style
  • Ed Discussion Board for asynchronous help from course staff
  • Ed Lessons with informational slides and practice problems
  • Course Staff Page for course staff email addresses
  • Office Hours & IPL page for in-person TA assistance at the IPL and instructors office hours
• Direct fellow students to specific course-provided or course-linked resources that will help them on graded work
• Explain how course-provided or course-linked examples work, and collaborate with or walk fellow students through non-graded work to help them master high level concepts
• Encourage fellow students to start their assignments early so that there will be time to receive help from course-provided or course-linked resources before the due date
• Remind fellow students that it is better to submit an incomplete assignment and use a resubmission to improve their grade than to make a submission that violates course policy and lose the ability to make resubmissions