Course Goals
This workshop is designed to help STARS students navigate CSE 142 (in Winter) and
CSE 143 (in Spring). Students will be given the space to learn the study and
test taking skills necessary for success in those classes. Students will also be
encouraged to use the CSE resources available to them for help: the instructor's office
hours as well as the IPL.
Note that this course will NOT be a space for help specifically on the CSE 142 or 143
programming assignments. In fact no questions directly about the assignments
will be answered during class time, in the workshop instructors office hours, or
TA-led check ins.
Grading
Grading Weights
This is a CR/NC course. You must earn an 80% or higher to receive credit for this
course. General components that will influence your grade are:
- Attending and participating in this workshop
- Attending and participating in CSE 142 (Winter) and CSE 143 (Spring)
- Attending and participating in your check-in meetings with a TA
- Completing all homework assignments for this class
- Seeking help if you are struggling with material in CSE 142/143 or in this class
- Preparing for and succeeding on in-class tests and quizzes
The grade book will be kept on Canvas and will be updated regularly;
please check it to be sure scores have been recorded correctly. Please
contact the course staff (cse190z-staff@cs) if something has been
recorded incorrectly. If you feel something has been regraded incorrectly,
please see the re-grade policy below.
The weighting for your grades will be as follows:
- 30% Homework: Completing all homework assignments
-
30% Assessments: Preparing for and putting forth good effort on all tests and quizzes
-
40% Participation and attendance: Attending and fully participating in class meetings
and check-in appointments
Homework
You will be given an assignment after each class and will ultimate be due before the
following class for a grade. However, you will need to at least attempt the
work prior to your check in meetings.
Homework assignments will include desk work and may include some programming.
All homework should be done individually,
you will be told when it is acceptable to work
collaboratively on an assignment.
Assessments
The purpose of the assessments is two fold:
-
to assess your knowledge of the material being presented, and
-
to give you an opportunity to practice your study and test taking
skills in preparation for the 142/143 exams.
At the instructor’s discretion, the lowest quiz grade may be dropped.
In class work and participation
In class work
CSE 190z will be an active learning class. As such there will be as
little direct instructor led lecturing as possible, and even when
there is, it will be interspersed with times students are expected to
think about and answer questions posed to the class.
Much of the work you will do in this class will be independent, pair,
or group work. Much of the time you will be expected to do this work
in order to further your own learning, and the product of the work will
not be collected. Occasionally it will be as a check for understanding.
You will also be given some time to do you project work during
classtime. We expect that you will use this time effective and
appropriately.
Participation
Participation will be both by your attendance and and active
engagement in the class and class discussions. (For more details on
what it means to be an "active participant" in the class,
please see the Participation section.)
Additionally, at least one
assignment (Teach the Class) will also have a
graded component based on your participation in that assignment in
particular.
Late Work
Late work will not be accepted unless under special circumstances. If you
need to turn in an assignment late under special circumstances,
please email the instructor to schedule a meeting PRIOR to when the
assignment is due in which we can discuss and determine if extra
time is needed.
Re-grade Policy
Reflecting on grades is one of the most valuable ways you can learn
from your mistakes, and we encourage you to do so. I you have a question
about a grade you received or if you feel the
grade you received is incorrect please email the instructor for an
appointment to discuss the assignment and your grade in detail.
It is also possible for the graders to make mistakes. If that happens
we certainly would like to correct the error. Please note the following:
-
When you request a regrade, we may look at the entire problem/lab/question/etc.
Therefore, while it is possible for your grade to go up or down, though up
is more likely.
-
Homeworks/projects: Send an email to the grader (find who commented
on your assignment submission) and CC the instructor. Include a
written summary describing why your work should be looked at again.
Regrade requests must be submitted within a week of when the homework
grade was returned.
-
Assessments: We may use Gradescope to grade quizzes or exams and
manage regrade requests. Via Gradescope, you should submit any
requests separately for each problem with an explaination of why
you want this problem regraded.
Participation
Your participation grade will mostly include include your active
participation in class and in the learning process. The questions
below are designed to help you understand what it means to be an
active participant in this class.
-
Did you come to the class or session with relevant ideas, and questions
related to the topics for the day?
-
Do you make at least one excellent contribution (e.g., insight or
question) to each class without monopolizing discussion?
-
Do you give active nonverbal and verbal feedback?
-
Do you refer to other students by name and react to their contributions?
-
Are any email or message discussions held to our same class norms?
Participation Balance
In any group there will be those who speak more and those who speak less;
this might be because of differences in personality, language fluency, or
culture. Some people like to carefully think before they speak and some
believe that interaction should be rapid and assertive. Be mindful that
others have important things to say too, but they may need a bit more
time to speak.
If you often find yourself dominating class discussions, or answering
all of the instructors questions, try limiting yourself to 3 really good
responses, to give others a chance to participate. Remember,
the silence is really ok, and it is sometimes needed
for other students to feel comfortable speaking.
References
Some of the text in the Participation section was borrowed from
Benjamin Mako Hill's
Teaching: Assessment materials
Course Expectations
Communication
You, the student, are expected to...
-
check the canvas for assignments.
-
check our Ed Discussion board
daily for updates and discussions
-
use our Ed Discussion board
to post your own questions
-
Read emails that are sent to the course list (occasionally).
-
Respond to direct emails in a timely manner.
-
ASK QUESTIONS!!! particularly if part of an assignment or assessment is unclear.
The instructor will ...
-
Do the best to write clear assignments and assessments.
-
Do the best to respond to student emails within 24 hours on weekdays,
48 hours on weekends.
Attendance and Punctuality
Please see the STARS Courses:
Basic Policies document for information about the attendance policies of this
and other STARS courses.
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 this classroom.
-
I am 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 or receiving any messages (text,
Snapchat, Facebook, etc).
-
If we hear your phone ring once during class we’ll ask you to turn it off.
If your phone rings again, we’ll need to have a talk.
A third time and you will be asked to turn it off and put it away or leave
the room to avoid distracting others.
-
If there is a somewhat emergent case where you do need to receive a
phone call or text message, please speak with an instructor at the beginning of
class to explain why you need an exception to these rules. You will still be
expected to keep your phone on vibrate, and as soon as you
receive said call or message, you quietly excuse yourself outside
to answer it, returning promptly after.
-
The *one* special exception to the Phones Away policy is during
work time. If you truly work well listening to music via
headphones/earbuds, you may do so. However, if we see that
the phone is distracting you in other ways you will be asked to put it away.
-
Laptops: I'm sure you've heard all the research (like
this,
and this,
and this)
that you should really take notes with pen and
paper, but you may use a laptop or tablet 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 class. 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/DM, 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 often seem distracted by what’s on your screen,
I 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 were technology
focused, and even some of them were really out of the students' control.
Professor Hacker says it: 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 you are expected to...
-
have and use anti virus software provided by the university,
-
Back up your work regularly using the ample "cloud" resources like Google Drive or
Microsoft 365.
and... we expect that if your computer breaks, get lost, has trouble, and so on you will:
-
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)
-
Use the university lab resources through Odegaard or the Engineering lab
to complete your homework for this class.
Academic Conduct
Integrity is a crucial part of your character and is essential for
a successful career. We expect you to demonstrate integrity in
this class and elsewhere.
The Paul G Allen School has an entire page on
Academic Misconduct
within the context of Computer Science, and the University of
Washington has an entire page on how
Academic Misconduct
is handled on their
Community Standards and Student Conduct Page.
Please acquaint yourself with both of those pages, and in
particular how academic misconduct will be reported to the
University.
Your academic conduct in this course is evaluated in at least the
four areas described in detail below.
Honesty in Communications
Individuals are expected to be honest and forthcoming
in communications with TAs and the instructors.
School Appropriateness of Content
Note that one of our course policies is to engender an
inclusive
environment. As such it is important that you are thoughtful about
what you choose to use in your work. Please make sure that the
images and text you are using are “school appropriate” and follow
the guidelines of expected behavior. If you have any questions,
please do not hesitate to ask a TA or your instructors. Inappropriate work
submitted may be ineligible for credit on that assignment.
Copyright and Citations
All of the expressions of ideas in this class that are fixed in
any tangible medium such as digital and physical documents are
protected by copyright law as embodied in title 17 of the United
States Code. These expressions include the work product of both:
(1) your student colleagues (e.g., any assignments published here
in the course environment or statements committed to text in a
discussion forum); and, (2) your instructor (e.g., the syllabus,
assignments, reading lists, and lectures). Within the constraints
of "fair use," you may copy these copyrighted
expressions for your personal intellectual use in support of your
education here in the UW. Such fair use by you does not include
further distribution by any means of copying, performance or
presentation beyond the circle of your close acquaintances,
student colleagues in this class and your family. If you have any
questions regarding whether a use to which you wish to put one of
these expressions violates the creator's copyright interests,
please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.
The essence of academic life revolves around respect not only for
the ideas of others, but also their rights to those ideas. It is
therefore essential that we take the utmost care that the ideas
(and the expressions of those ideas) of others always be handled
appropriately, and, where necessary, cited. When ideas or
materials of others are used (particularly in your creative
projects), they must be cited. The citation format is not that important -
as long as the source material can be located and the citation
verified, it's OK. In any situation, if you have a question,
please feel free to ask.
You must have the right to publish any of the images, videos,
text, or other media in any creative work you do for this class. This means you may
use:
-
Media you have created or generated yourself (i.e. pictures you
have created or taken yourself, text you have written yourself.)
-
Images that are in the public domain (something from Wikipedia),
or something with a creative commons license that allows for
reuse without explicit permission of the owner.
-
Creative Commons Kiwi
is a really informative video on Creative Commons licensing.
-
Instructions on how to search for images that are fair use are
here.
-
You must cite any works that you use that you did not generate
yourself (although technically you only need to cite things
that are
CC Attribution)
A handy site for knowing how to add your citations is
here.
Collaboration Policies
As a teacher, it’s not my goal in life to read a class’ worth of
programs on a topic that all basically look the same. My goal is to
assess whether you understand the material that we’ve taught in class
enough, and you demonstrate that to me through the work you do.
I can not assess that if you are turning in someone else’s work
- Dr. Tom Butler, Lakeside H.S.
Computer science education is odd in that we expect you to turn in
work that you do completely independently when in the
"real world" that’s not how it works at all. In the real
world, co-workers collaborate, bounce ideas off each other, they look
up parts of solutions on the internet. But in the "real world"
the people doing the work have years of experience, they have proved
themselves to their teachers, co-workers and bosses to where they are
at that moment and most importantly, they know how to evaluate
which of the solutions they are receiving is an appropriate one to
solve the task at hand.
As your instructor, I need to be able to evaluate your work.
Thus, unless otherwise specified (i.e. pair or group work), all
work in this and other CS classes must be your own.
You may wind up using other people or online resources to learn how to
achieve new things, but we expect you to synthesize this work in your
own way and learn to write your own code. You should never copy (plagiarize)
homework or code from another person in this school (past or present)
or that you find online directly and submitting it as your own work.
Specifically, you must abide by the following:
- You may not use code directly from any external sources
(including copying lecture/section material in programming assignments).
-
You may not post your homework solutions on a publicly
accessible (non-password-protected) web server or Git repository, during the
course or after it has been completed. Please see the course
website for acceptable ways to show your work to others.
-
You may not look at or use prior solutions from any source.
In short: you should think of most assignments in this class
as assessments and as such, complete them independently - unless otherwise told.
Important reading: Some students at Lakeside HS wrote the
Collaboration Guidelines for CS
document in 2016 (you need to be logged in with your
UW NetID to read this). This document has some clear examples of
what to do and not to do and will be required reading for Computer
Science courses.
Privacy
To support an academic environment of rigorous discussion and open
expression of personal thoughts and feelings, we, as members of
the academic community, must be committed to the inviolate right
of privacy of our student and instructor colleagues. As a result,
we must forego sharing personally identifiable information about
any member of our community including information about the ideas
they express, their families, lifestyles and their political and
social affiliations. If you have any questions regarding whether a
disclosure you wish to make regarding anyone in this course or in
the university community violates that person's privacy interests,
please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.
Knowingly violating any of these principles of academic conduct,
privacy or copyright may result in University disciplinary action
under the Student Code of Conduct.
Inclusion Statement
You all belong in this class and as such should expect to
be treated by your classmates and the course staff with respect. It
is our goal, as the course staff, to provide an interesting and
challenging environment that is conducive to your learning.
If any incident occurs that challenges this commitment to a supportive
and inclusive environment, please let the instructor know so the issue
can be addressed.
Expected Behavior
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) recently released
guidelines of expected behavior as part of their
Policy Against Harassment at ACM Activities
. The ACM's description of expected behavior is as follows:
-
Exercise consideration and respect in your speech and actions;
-
Refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behavior and speech;
-
Be mindful of your surroundings and of your fellow participants;
-
Alert community leaders if you notice a dangerous situation, someone
in distress, or violations of this policy, even if they seem inconsequential.
ACM's policy also has a detailed description of unacceptable behavior
on the same page.