Syllabus

Course Information¶

Teaching Staff

Instructor: Suh Young Choi (atobdura@cs.washington.edu)

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

Class Session Meeting

See Class Sessions for information on how each day of class will be run.

• MWF: 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm (GWN 301)
• Th: Check MyUW for your section’s room and time!

Other Info

• Prerequisite: Any of CSE 122, 123, 142, 143, 160
• Course Website: Here!
• Feedback: You can submit (anonymous) feedback to the course staff here.

Course Goals¶

The world has become data-driven. Domain scientists and industry increasingly rely on data analysis to drive innovation and discovery; this reliance on data is not only restricted to science or business, but also is crucial to those in government, public policy, and those wanting to be informed citizens. As the size of data continues to grow, everyone will need to use powerful tools to work with that data.

This course teaches intermediate data programming. It is a follow-on to CSE122 (Introduction to Computer Programming II) or CSE160 (Data Programming).

The course complements CSE123, which focuses more deeply on fundamental programming concepts and the internals of data structures. In contrast, CSE163 emphasizes the efficient use of those concepts for data programming.

In this course, students will learn:

1. More advanced programming concepts than in CSE122 or CSE160– including how to write bigger programs with multiple classes and modules.
2. How to work with different types of data: tabular, text, images, geo-spatial.
3. Ecosystem of data science tools including Jupyter Notebooks and various data science libraries such as pandas and scikit-learn.
4. Basic concepts related to code complexity, efficiency of different types of data structures, and memory management.
5. Foundations of data literacy and technical communication for critical and conscientious data science.

Software¶

Most of this course’s lecture material will be run on JupyterHub, which is free for students enrolled in CSE 163 this quarter. All links to specific resources can be found on the course website.

At the beginning of the quarter, we will ask you to install Python on your computer for the take-home assessments and final project. We will use Python 3 installed via Anaconda on all programming assignments and Visual Studio Code is our officially supported IDE (a fancy term for text editor). You may use other installations of Python or IDEs, but the course staff may not necessarily be able to help you with any set-up related questions you may have. See Software for installation instructions.

Class Sessions and Quiz Sections¶

Class Sessions¶

To best support your learning in CSE 163 this quarter, we will be using a flipped classroom model for instruction. To accomplish this the lecture content (called “lessons”) will be done asynchronously on our course website, and our in-person class sessions will focus on structured activities to practice the skills and ideas you learned in the lesson. This means the first time you will be introduced to the course content will be on your own time outside the class session, while the class session will be hosted to give you practice on the material you saw in the lesson you completed earlier.

It’s okay if the readings don’t make perfect sense the first time you read them! Learning is a process that takes time and work, and revisiting a topic is very important. Things you find confusing in the reading are great things to start off asking questions about on the course message board, in class, or in quiz sections.

Sickness If you are sick, stay home! Any required in-person course components will have a make-up for students who are sick. You will not be penalized for staying home, taking care of yourself, and helping keep our community safe!

Details¶

Every week, there will be Lessons on the course website that contain readings and practice problems on the content for the course that day, followed by a short comprehension quiz that you will submit through Canvas. Lessons are released weekly, so you will be able to complete them on your own time during the week (there is a mention of a due date later on in the grading portion). Notice that the deadline for a lesson is AFTER the time for our class session that day. This is because we think the most effective way to learn this content is follow the these steps:

1. Before Class: Complete Reading: Do the reading/video portion of that day’s lesson. You can look over practice problems, but you want to spend the time in the class session working on them.
2. Attend Class Session: Come to the class session with questions and ready to work on activities and practice problems with peers.
3. After Class: Complete Lesson: Take the skills you practice and go back to the lesson to review anything that you struggled with and finish any problems you didn’t solve during the class session.
4. Reflect: Take time to look back on what you learned. As a starting point, think about the following questions (and maybe write down your answers in your notes!):
   • Can I describe this concept in my own words?
   • How does this concept relate to everything we have seen so far?
   • Why did we learn this concept?
   • Write down some “tips” for if you were going to help a colleague who was struggling with this content.

Attendance Options¶

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 the problems as a whole class. The class sessions will be recorded so students who cannot attend can view them later. Note that with the flipped-style of our class, the only a small part of the recordings will be useful since most of the time will be spent with students working in groups.

Quiz Sections¶

Quiz sections are smaller, TA-run sessions where students work in groups on practice problems and review concepts from the week. Quiz sections meet on Thursdays according to the time you registered for. Like with class sessions, there is no attendance requirement, but you are expected to attend to keep up with the course material (assuming you are not sick!). There will be a weekly assignment that you complete during or after section, to be submitted through Gradescope. Section handouts and materials can also be found on the course website and on Ed.

It is possible to attend a different section than the one you are registered for. You will need to ask permission from the TA of the quiz section you want to attend, since they might be planning for a fixed number of students or might not have capacity to safely seat all students in their classroom. You can find the TA assignments on our staff page.

Attendance Options¶

Quiz sections will not be recorded. Instead, the course staff will post all materials used in section on the course website and will sometimes also 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.

Inclusion¶

All students are welcome in CSE 163 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 any of 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 to CSE or contacting the UW Office of the Ombud. As a reminder, you may use our

Required Course Work, Resubmissions, and Late Work¶

Types of Assignments

There will be five categories of course work you will do in this class:

• Checkpoints (Biweekly, 5 total)

  Short assignments on Gradescope consisting of a few problems to assess your learning for about two weeks’ worth of course content. Checkpoints will usually be released on Fridays (after the last lesson in that week’s batch) and will generally be due Mondays. You may work collaboratively on checkpoints with classmates, but you should never submit code or answers that you did not write yourself.

• Reading Assignments (Biweekly, 5 total)

  Reading and reflecting on one or two readings that supplement what we have covered in class, alternating with checkpoints. You will make annotations to a reading assignment in Hypothesis (linked through Canvas). These annotations can be questions, critiques, analyses, or open responses. We will include guided reading questions for each assignment if you are not sure where to start!

• Section Assignments (Weekly, 9 total)

  Section assignments consist of a few guided conceptual and coding problems to be worked on during or after the weekly quiz section. Section assignments will be released on Thursdays before section and will be due the following Friday before lecture. These help us track section participation and attendance.

• Take-Home Assessments (Sort-of Weekly, 5 total)

  Longer programming assignments that will assess your mastery of the skills and concepts covered in class that week. While Take-Home Assessments will emphasize content covered in the week preceding the assessment’s release, they will often integrate content from earlier in the quarter as well. Assessments will be due on Thursdays and must be completed independently, though you may discuss your approach with classmates (more on this below).

  Each Take-Home Assessment has two components:

  • Technical Component: Completing a set of 4-5 coding tasks according to the staff’s specifications.

  • Creative Component: Write 1-2 coding tasks of your own, following the minimum requirements for each assessment. Then, show us your best work and how you’d solve your own tasks!

• Final Project or Portfolio (parts due throughout quarter)

  The final project is your opportunity to create something new that you want to share with the rest of the world. The nature of your project is entirely up to you, and we will provide additional guidelines to ensure that your project is sufficiently complex. All that we ask is that you build something of interest to you, that you solve an actual problem, that you impact campus, or that you change the world! Strive to create something that outlives this course!

  Alternatively, you may choose to submit a final portfolio that showcases your best work from the creative components on each assessment. The portfolio is an opportunity for you to revise the work that you have done on the creative components, explain your choices, and assemble a “best of” from this quarter.

  More information for both options will be made available as the time approaches. Note that there will be a presentation component for both options, which will be done in the final section of the quarter.

• Final Reflection

  There is not a formal final exam for this course. However, in order for us to get the best sense of how this quarter went for you, what you learned, and how you think you will use it, we will use the final exam period for you to write your responses to pre-released questions about what you learned this quarter and how you might carry it forward. We intend this to be a VERY low-stress time. All you need to show up with is yourself, a writing utensil, and your Husky ID!

Revision and Resubmission

Learning from mistakes is an important part of gaining proficiency any skill, especially for novices. To enable this, you are allowed to revise and resubmit your work on take-home assessments to demonstrate improved mastery after your initial submission. Resubmissions are subject to the following rules:

• Only one take-home assessment can be resubmitted each week.
• Each take-home assessment can only be resubmitted within two cycles of receiving feedback (example below)
• There will be 8 weeks in total where you will be eligible to make a resubmission after receiving feedback from your TA.
• If you have already made a submission to a take-home assessment, you may not make a resubmission until you have received feedback on your previous submission of that assessment. (Generally one week after the due date.)
• Resubmissions must be accompanied by a short write-up describing the changes made. This will both support you in being deliberate about the changes you make and facilitate grading of resubmissions by making the changes clear.
• A take-home assessment that has been found to involve academic misconduct may not be resubmitted (see Academic Honesty and Collaboration below).

Resubmissions will be graded and the new grades will fully replace the previous grades. The new grade will be based entirely on the resubmitted work, meaning that your grades may go down when resubmitting. In addition, while every effort is made to identify all areas that could be improved when grading, feedback is not guaranteed to be exhaustive. Be sure to consult all available resources and materials to ensure your work meets all guidelines.

Two-cycle limit per take-home assessment: Since there are a limited number of weeks in the quarter, it is very important that you stay on top of your work as much as possible. Our resubmission policy is designed such that you can only be submitting any take-home assessment a maximum of twice throughout the quarter. Further, the two-cycle limit fixes due times for all assignments, so that you aren’t resubmitting the first take-home assessment in the last cycle of the quarter. That makes it very important that you complete as much of the assignment as you can by the initial submission date, so that you can receive feedback on more of that assignment before using a resubmission on it later. We understand that there may be extenuating circumstances that might require you to not fully meet your goal on an assignment with a single resubmission. If something arises that requires you to not be able to complete an assignment fully, you should reach out to your section TA to discuss a plan for getting caught up with the course and we can discuss an accommodation.

Here’s an example of what the resubmission calendar and two-cycle limit might look like for a take-home assessment:

• Take-home assessments are released on Friday and due the following Thursday. The gold-yellow box from June 23 to June 29 indicates the normal submission window.
• TAs work on grades for the following week and release feedback a week after any take-home assessment is due. The teal line indicates the initial grading period, with feedback released on July 6 (marked with a circle). In some cases, we will allow late submissions during the teal period, but note that you are not guaranteed to receive feedback by the 6^th.
• The following week and a half are the open resubmission cycles that you can submit to. Resubmission cycles close on Tuesdays, so the triangles on the 11^th and 18^th indicate when you should make your resubmission by. You are welcome to make resubmissions in one or both of the indicated cycles, but note that you are not guaranteed to get feedback between the two posted resubmission cycles.

Only take-home assessments may be resubmitted. Checkpoints are graded on completing them correctly, while reading assignments are graded for completion with effort. The final project is designed to give you feedback throughout the various parts of the project and individual components cannot be resubmitted.

Late Work

• For take-home assessments, late work is generally not accepted. However, if you are unable to turn in a take-home assessment by its initial submission, you will be able to use one of the weekly resubmissions in future weeks to turn in the assignment. Resubmission cycles will begin after the initial due date of the first take-home assessment and will generally close every Tuesday. Remember, you may only make one resubmission a week, so using a resubmission to turn in an assignment you missed earlier means you will be able to make fewer resubmissions. This means it benefits you the most to try your best to turn in as much of your work as possible before the initial submission date, so you can get feedback on that and iterate on it in a future resubmission, rather than using that resubmission to get your first piece of feedback on that assignment.
• Checkpoints and reading assignments are generally not accepted late unless you have enough Weekly Tokens. Using a Weekly Token allows you to submit a single checkpoint or a single reading assignment at any point after the due date before the last day of finals week (Friday 3/13). Every student in CSE 163 will start with one Weekly Token. See Extra Credit: Weekly Tokens for information on how to earn more.
• Components of the final project cannot be submitted late.

Please see the policy on Extenuating Circumstances for more information.

Extra Credit: Weekly Tokens¶

As mentioned under Class Sessions, each day of class we will have an associated lesson that has the reading and some practice problems associated with the content that day. At the end of each Lesson, you will find a Canvas Quiz that can be submitted for credit towards earning a Weekly Token. We will consider lessons due at 11:59 pm on the day of the class session for that lesson. For example, Lesson 1 for Monday ⅕ should be completed by 11:59 pm on Monday ⅕ to be counted as on-time. The Canvas quizzes are autograded and only count for “completion” with a perfect score. You may make as many submissions as you would like to get that perfect score!

As a small incentive to stay on top of the lessons each day so that you can better participate in the class community throughout the quarter, we will provide a small extra credit opportunity for completing lessons on time. Lessons completed on time go towards earning Weekly Tokens. Every 6 lessons you complete on time will be converted to one Weekly Token.

As mentioned above, a Weekly Token allows you to turn in a checkpoint or reading assignment late at any point before the Friday of finals week. Every student will start with one Weekly Token and then every 6 lessons completed on time will add an extra token. Every student will get 2 free lesson completions for the MLK Day and Presidents’ Day holidays this quarter. You do not need to inform us that you are using a token. At the end of the quarter, we will accept $X$ checkpoints or reading assignments that were completed late as being on time if you have $X$ tokens.

For example, suppose Rodrigo has completed 15 lessons on time (including the free holiday lesson). That means Rodrigo would have a total of 3 Checkpoint Tokens: 1 for the one they started with and 2 for completing the six lesson requirement twice. This means Rodrigo would now be able to turn up to 3 checkpoints or reading assignments late at any point during the quarter (before the last Friday of the quarter) and still earn credit for them. Note that Rodrigo cannot submit 3 checkpoints and 3 reading assignments late; the total number of late checkpoints and reading assignments must add up to 3.

Grades¶

Grading Scale¶

Your percentage grade in this course will be weighted using the following categories:

Checkpoint Grading¶

Each checkpoint consists of conceptual and coding problems. With the exception of the first one, each checkpoint will cover the content of about two weeks’ worth of lesson material. Checkpoints will generally be released a week after the last one was due and will be due the following Monday at 11:59 pm on Gradescope. To earn full credit on a checkpoint, you need to successfully complete all questions of the checkpoint before the due date.

There is no autograder for the checkpoint, so you will not be able to see whether your answers are correct after submitting.

As described above, Checkpoints are generally not accepted late unless you have enough Weekly Tokens. You do not need to inform us that you are using a token. At the end of the quarter, we will accept $X$ checkpoints that were completed late as being on time if you have $X$ tokens. Once we have completed initial grades for a checkpoint, we will open it up for submissions again. Gradescope will let you turn in checkpoints late even if you don’t have sufficient tokens, but we will not accept late submissions for credit unless you have sufficient tokens. Please reach out to the course staff if you encounter difficulties that might prevent you from completing a Checkpoint on time.

Reading Assignment Grading¶

Reading assignments are given through Hypothesis in alternating weeks with checkpoints. We understand that it might be a bit unusual to have reading content in a computer science course, so we will provide scaffolding in the individual assignments to help you get started! Reading assignments will consist of one or two articles, websites, or documents that are relevant to what we are covering in class over a roughly two-week period.

To complete a reading assignment, open the document in Hypothesis (linked through Canvas). You will be required to make some number of initial comments and some number of responses to your section peers. To help ensure that everyone is able to make their comments on time, we will provide a recommended “initial comments due” date in Canvas. You are not strictly required to make initial comments by this date, but it helps your peers, and eventually you, too! We intend for the comments to start conversations, and thus they can be open-ended. We will provide optional reading questions if you’re not sure where to start, but we’d really like to see what you think of the readings!

With the exception of the first one, reading assignments will generally be released immediately after the last one was due, so that you have time to give meaningful comments and reflections on the assignment. Reading assignments will usually be due on Mondays at 11:59 pm. To earn full credit on reading assignments, you need to complete the required number of comments with effort and thoughtful examples. (You are always welcome to make more!)

Take-Home Assessment Grading¶

Take-home assessments are longer programming assignments, and will generally be released Friday after lecture and due the following Thursday at 11:59 pm. Take-home assessments consist of two parts, a Technical Component and a Creative Component.

Technical Component¶

The Technical Component is like a traditional programming assignment, where you will be asked to write code, documentation, and testing for about 4-5 staff-written tasks. They will be graded on four dimensions:

Behavior

Does the input and output functionality of the submission adhere to the specification? (i.e., do all tests pass in the Gradescope autograder?)

Concepts

Does the code effectively and appropriately use the Python language or libraries necessary for the assignment? Does your solution align with what we have taught in class?

Quality

Does the code adhere to all of the relevant code quality guidelines? Are all aspects of the code well-documented?

Testing

Did you write unit tests to ensure the correctness of your code? Do these tests cover all relevant cases?

Note: Some assignments do not require writing tests, so we will instead assess writeups related to what you worked on in the assignments. This will be explained in greater detail on the relevant take-home assessment specifications!

Creative Component¶

The Creative Component is more open-ended. We will give you minimum requirements (e.g., a function covered in class, a dataset, or documentation), and you will be responsible for creating 1-2 coding tasks of your own, and providing the solutions to your tasks. You will also be responsible for peer-reviewing 1-2 of your classmates’ creative work as well.

The Creative Component will be graded on two dimensions:

Requirements (staff-assessed)

Have you provided a description of each coding task in a way that another person can understand the problem statement? Have you provided a working solution?

Review

Did you provide constructive and actionable feedback to your peers?

Note: We understand that it can be scary to give and receive peer feedback on creative work! However, this is a skill that we believe is important for responsible and conscientious computing. We will provide structured ways to give feedback during the peer review portion of the Creative Component to help this process be supportive and respectful.

Course Grades¶

There is no curve in CSE 163. Final grades will be assigned according to the percentages given above. Additionally, we will make the following minimum guarantees for final GPA. If you earn at least the percentage specified on the left, your course grade will be at least the grade listed on the right. These are minimum guarantees: your course grade could be (and in the past, tends to be) higher than what this table suggests.

If you have a specific goal in your course grade, please feel free to reach out to the course staff or directly to the instructor. We can work together to talk about what you can expect in terms of meeting that goal.

Getting Help from Staff & Peers¶

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 one of the take-home assessments if you are running into difficulties.

• 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 get 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!

Academic Honesty and Collaboration¶

Philosophy

Learning is a collaborative process, and everyone benefits from working with others when learning new concepts and skills. In general, we encourage you to collaborate with your classmates in your learning and take advantage of each others’ experience, understanding, and perspectives.

However, there is a difference between learning collaboratively and submitting work that is not your own. This can be a subtle but important distinction. Ultimately, the goal of the course is to ensure that every student masters the material and develops the skills to succeed in future courses, projects, and other related work. Submitting work that is not your own, or allowing another student to submit your work as their own, does not contribute toward developing mastery. In addition, this deprives you of the ability to receive feedback and support from the course staff in addressing the areas in which you are struggling.

For more information, consult the Allen School policy on academic misconduct.

Permitted and Prohibited Actions

Sometimes the line between productive collaboration and academic dishonesty can be a little ambiguous. The following is a partial list of collaborative actions that are encouraged and prohibited. This list is not intended to be exhaustive; there are many actions not included that may fall under either heading. This list is here to help you understand examples of things that are/aren’t allowed. If you are ever unsure, please ask the course staff before potentially acting in a way that violates this policy!

The following types of collaboration are encouraged:

• Discussing the content of lessons, sections or any provided examples.

• Working collaboratively on solutions to practice problems or checkpoints.

• Posting and responding to questions on the course message board, including responding to questions from other students (without providing assessment code; see below).

• Describing, either verbally or in text, your approach to a take-home assessment at a high-level and in such a way that the person receiving the description cannot reliably reproduce your exact work. Such description should be in English or another natural human language (i.e., not code).

• Asking a member of the course staff about concepts with which you are struggling or bugs in your work.

The following types of collaboration are prohibited and may constitute academic misconduct:

• Looking at another person’s submission on a take-home assessment, or substantially similar code, at any point, in any form, for any reason, and for any amount of time. This restriction includes work written by classmates, family members or friends, former students, and online resources (such as GitHub or Chegg), among other sources (including the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot).

• Showing or providing your submission on a take-home assessment to another student at any time, in any format, for any reason. This includes posting your work publicly on the internet.

• Submitting work that contains code copied from another resource, even with edits or changes, except for resources explicitly provided by the course staff.

• Having another person “walk you through” work you submit, or walking another person through work they submit, such that the work produced can be entirely and reliably reconstructed from the instructions provided. (That is, submitting work that you produced simply by following instructions on what to write.) This restriction includes classmates, former students, family members or friends, paid tutors or consultants, “homework support” services (such as Chegg), AI tools (such as ChatGPT), etc.

If you discuss an assignment with one or more classmates, you must specify with whom you collaborated in the header comment in your submission. You may discuss with as many classmates as you like, but you must cite all of them in your work. Note that you may not collaborate in a way that is prohibited, even if you cite the collaboration.

A good rule of thumb to ensuring your collaboration is allowed is to not take written notes, photographs, or other records during your discussion and wait at least 30 minutes after completing the discussion before returning to your own work. You could use this time to relax, watch TV, read a book, or do work for another class. For most students, this will result in you only bringing the high-level concepts of the collaboration back to your work, and ensuring that you reconstruct the ideas on your own.

Instead of utilizing forbidden resources, we hope you will submit whatever work you have, even if it is not yet complete, so you can get feedback and revise your work later. If you are ever in doubt if a collaboration or resources is permitted or not, please contact a member of the course staff!

Penalty

Any submission found to be in violation of this policy will receive a grade of 0, as we are unable to assess your mastery from work that is not your own. In addition, students will forfeit the ability to resubmit work that is found to be in violation. Repeated or egregious violations of the policy will be forwarded to a relevant university committee for further action. There will be no exceptions or modifications to these penalties.

Amnesty

The course staff has endeavored to create an environment in which all students feel empowered and encouraged to submit their own work, regardless of the quality, and avoid prohibited collaboration. However, despite our best efforts, students may occasionally exercise poor judgement and violate this policy. In many cases, these students come to regret this decision almost immediately. To that end, we offer the following opportunity for amnesty:

If you submit work that is in violation of the academic conduct policy, you may bring the action to Suh Young’s attention within 72 hours of submission and request amnesty. If you do so, you will receive a reduced grade on just that assignment but no other further action will be taken. This action will not be shared outside of the course staff and will not be part of any academic record except in the case of repeated acts or abuses of the policy.

This policy is designed to allow students who have acted in a way they regret the opportunity to correct the situation and complete their work in a permitted way. It is not intended to provide forgiveness for violations that are detected by the course staff, nor to be invoked frequently. It is still in your best interest to submit whatever work you have completed so that you can receive feedback and support.

Note that, while requesting amnesty will allow you to resubmit your work, the resubmission must still not violate the collaboration policy. In particular, the resubmission must not include work that is not your own. It is extremely difficult to “unsee” or “forget” work that you may have viewed in violation of the policy, and it is your responsibility to ensure that your resubmission is completed entirely in accordance with the policy. (Needless to say, the easiest way to achieve this is to not violate the policy in the first place!)

AI Use in CSE 163¶

We generally discourage the use of generative AI (including, but not limited to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot) in relation to the work you complete for this class, but we do not wholly forbid its use. We recognize and understand that generative AI, like any other external resource, can be helpful for clarifying concepts, effective debugging, or explaining problems at a high level. However, this course is designed to help you learn not just Python programming, but also how to use coding as a form of expression and communication. This development happens through sustained engagement with challenging material! Over-reliance on AI, especially when you’re encountering new or difficult concepts, can sometimes lead to a false sense of understanding, which in turn deprives you from authentic, meaningful relationships with what you’re learning.

Our overarching stance on generative AI is that it is another tool in the ecosystem of external resources, so we expect that you treat it like one. We recognize the environmental and ethical concerns around its use in everyday contexts, but this statement focuses on its impact in the classroom. Generative AI is generally more dynamic and responsive to individual users’ needs, which is why we urge caution. A good way to assess whether you are engaging with AI tools in ways that support your learning is to consider how you interact with an AI tool vs. with a human. Would you ask your peer to complete your homework for you? We hope not! Could you ask her to review some course concepts with you and study together? Certainly!

At the end of the day, all submitted work is designed to be completed with what has been taught in lecture and section. You are completing the assignments for this class with the understanding that you know what is in and out of scope. We will provide examples and scaffolds to help you as you build and develop skills in this course. In return, show us your human side, and be unapologetic about it. We want you to own your craft! That means that your code and documentation should be your own, creative work should come from your own ideas, and written work should be your own words! You will not be marked down for grammar or mechanics as long as we understand what you are saying and your arguments are sound.

Course Climate¶

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

We recognize that our students come from varied backgrounds and can have widely-varying circumstances. If you have any unforeseen circumstances that arise during the course, please do not hesitate to contact the course staff or the instructor 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. If it’s not small for you, it’s not small for us. We are not here to penalize you for being human. We want to see you succeed and we will do what we can to help that happen.

Disabilities¶

Your experience in this class should not be adversely 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 lecturers 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.

We are aware that sometimes establishing accommodations through formal channels can be stressful, time-consuming, or financially difficult. While we generally encourage having formal accommodations on record so that you can carry these forward in other classes, we are happy to meet and discuss ad-hoc accommodations at any time.

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.

Additional Student Resources¶

Further UW Resources¶

• UW Campus Food Pantry: Provides UW students, staff, and faculty with nonperishable groceries and select fresh produce for no cost.
• Counseling Center: Resources for students seeking counseling.
• Let’s Talk: Free, confidential, informal drop-in counseling service at UW.
• Leadership Without Borders: Resources for undocumented students.
• International Student Services Office: Visa and immigration advising for international students on F or J student visas.
• Safe Campus: How to report violence or threats to the safety of yourself or others.
• Office of the Title IX Coordinator: Resources and reporting against discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, pregnancy and related conditions, and LGBTQ identity.
• Student Legal Services: Resources for legal issues, advice, and education; includes immigration, housing, family law, bankruptcy, civil rights, disability, domestic violence, and employment/unemployment legal services.
• wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House: Community, support, and resources for American Indian and Alaska Native students, faculty, and staff; as well as others from various cultures and communities.
• Prayer and Meditation Spaces: A list of spaces on campus for prayer, meditation, or reflection

General (Non-UW) Resources¶

• Know Your Rights: ACLU’s resources on immigrant rights and how to respond to immigrations officers (available in multiple languages)
• PFLAG’s list of Support Hotlines: Hotlines and crisis support for LGBTQ+ individuals