Course Expectations

Communication

You, the student, are expected to...

• Check the course website daily for announcements, and assignments.
• Use our Piazza message board for discussions.
• Read emails that are sent to the course list.
• Respond to direct emails in a timely manner
• ASK QUESTIONS!!! Particularly if part of an assignment or assessment is unclear.

The instructors will ...

• Do our best to make assignments and assessments clear and accurate.
• Do our best to respond to student emails within 24 hours on weekdays, 48 hours on weekends.

Attendance and Punctuality

You are expected to attend all classes this session. Participation is part of your grade, and you can't be graded on participation if you're not physically present. In addition, our goal is to incorporate active learning where appropriate in this class to support an engaging environment, giving you the opportunity to practice key problem-solving strategies, interact with peers, and ask questions of the instructor and TAs.

All students are expected to arrive on time to class except for in cases of emergency. If you do arrive late, please respect the learning of other students and take a seat in the back putting forth great effort to reduce distracting other students when you arrive. Do the best to catch up if we are in a direct instruction (lecture) portion, and ask for additional information and help if you need during lecture breaks, office hours, or WPL.

Technology

(Portions heavily borrowed from Professor Hacker)

Technology in the classroom

This is a computer science class and somewhat obviously, we'll need to use technology in the classroom. However, it is to be used for adding value to your learning, not as a distraction. I understand that your phones connect you with your friends and family, but the classroom should be a place apart, however briefly, from the outside world. You will learn more, in short, if you can concentrate on the course while you’re in the course.

The following are some guidelines:

• Phones, tablets and other communication devices: This should go without saying: your cell phone and other devices should not be a distraction in the classroom, whether it be in Lecture, Section, or Lab.
• We are not asking you to turn your phone "off" (no one does when they're told to anyway), but your phone should be set to silent or vibrate before you enter the classroom and put away where it will not distract you (i.e preferably not in your pocket, but rather in your bag).
• You should not be sending or receiving any messages (text, Snapchat, Facebook, etc), playing games, shopping, or doing other unrelated activities during class.
• If there is an urgent case where you do need to receive a phone call or text message, please speak with the instructor at the beginning of class to explain why you need an exception to these rules. We will ask that you still keep your phone on vibrate, and as soon as you receive said call or message, you can quietly excuse yourself outside to answer it, returning promptly after.
• The *one* special exception to the "Phones Away" policy is during work time in Thursday Labs. If you truly work well listening to music via headphones/earbuds, you may do so. However, if your TA sees that communication with the phone is distracting you they will tell you to put it away.
• Laptops: Research ( this, and this, and this) has shown that you should really take notes with pen and paper. However, you may use a laptop to take notes during this class. In fact, we'll be needing our laptops quite a lot to do course work, test out theories, and even look up facts during lecture, lab and section. However, in-class laptops also present temptations that many students find irresistible. You should not use a laptop during class to follow a game, use social media, play games, IM, respond to email, etc, or even do work for another class! Such activities not only distract you (meaning you will be less able to participate meaningfully in the class’ conversations), they also distract anyone around or behind you. If you seem distracted by what’s on your screen, we will ask you to put your laptop away if we are lecturing (and perhaps even during work time).

Technology "Woes"

Instructors have heard just about every excuse for why work is not turned in on time. Many of these excuses are technology focused, and even some of them really are out of the students' control. Professor Hacker says it best: Let’s face it: technology breaks. servers go down, transfers time out, files become corrupt. The list goes on and on. These are not considered emergencies. They are part of the normal production process. An issue you may have with technology is no excuse for late work. You need to protect yourself by managing your time and backing up your work.

As such we expect you will...

• Have and use anti-virus software provided by the university,
• Back up your work regularly (we strongly recommend investing 30 minutes to learn how and why to use Git commits effectively to back up your code versions).

and... we expect that if your computer does break/get lost/ has trouble, you will

1. look into university resources to get it fixed/replaced (if you need to purchase a new machine check into the University's short term loan program)
2. use the university lab resources through Odegaard or the Engineering lab to complete your homework for this class.