CSE 390B is built on a number of different learning objectives—demystifying parts of the CSE curriculum, practicing academic skills for success at the UW, and exploring some of the coolest topics in computer science, to name a few. But at its heart, the course is grounded in the practice of metacognition: reflecting on your own thought processes and actions to understand how they impact an outcome.
As a course staff, we’ve gotten to see you grow and reflect on your academic strategies on 390B assignments. Now, we’d like to give you the chance to broaden that reflection and apply the skill of metacognition by talking in your own words about the growth you've done in your time as an Allen School student up to this point. For your final project, you will put together an E-Portfolio and deliver a short presentation geared toward someone just starting out in the Allen School (or even to yourself when YOU first started in the Allen School), giving them the advice you wish you’d had when you started. Your E-Portfolio will highlight the lessons learned from your own experience that you can pass on to another student, and should ultimately address the question: "Looking back, how has your learning experience contributed to your ability to be more successful as an Allen School student, however you define success?"
This E-Portfolio project is intended to be open-ended to some degree: we want to let you be creative and reflect your own individual journey, so we provide few strict requirements for the content of your E-Portfolio. Part of the work you’re expected to complete is preparing for a 8-10 minute presentation that will be delivered on the last day of class during Finals Week.
The topic of your E-Portfolio project is your experience so far in the major, but your audience is a newly admitted Allen School student, so when deciding how to communicate your experience you should think about what would be most effective for that audience. How you structure your E-Portfolio presentation is up to you, but you must include the following elements (in no particular order):
Two metacognitive skills that you’ve improved on or come to realize the importance of since you started in the Allen School. A summary of the metacognitive skills that we’ve covered in class are listed below. You should explain what the skill is, why it matters, and how you’ve gone about practicing it/improving at it.
For each metacognitive skill, give one concrete example of an incident or project from your own CSE experience that highlights its importance. For example, this could be an assignment/lecture/time where you deliberately practiced the skill and can connect it to your success on the assignment. It is also equally valid to describe an assignment/lecture/time where you did not practice the skill and can reflect on how that made things more difficult for you.
One technical topic from CSE 390B that helped you “connect the dots” and clear up confusion you had when you were first starting out. In other words, suppose the student watching your presentation has taken intro CSE classes but didn’t feel like they understood how the concepts of computing fit together. What topic could you bring up from CSE that has proven useful for your understanding and could convince them to stick it out in the the Allen School? Include a ~1 minute elevator pitch about your chosen topic to get them excited about it and highlight why you think it has been useful to understand. Note that your topic should be fairly specific - for example, talking about how the "hardware interacts with the software" is a broad theme about this course, but your topic should pick a specific example or sub-topic that highlights that theme. Feel free to ask the course staff if you have any questions or concerns.
Because your audience is a newly admitted Allen School student, you should make sure to give appropriate levels of background information for that audience. Keep in mind that a newly admitted student may not know all of the technical content you do, and may not be as familiar with Allen school courses/procedures as you are.
There are a number of sites that you can use to create your E-Portfolio. The following are free and fairly user friendly but are not required for students to use:
Your E-Portfolio should include visual aids and be easily navigable.
Remember that your E-Portfolio and reflections can be about your entire time in the Allen School thus far and does not need to focus specifically on this quarter. However, feel free to use as many skills, examples, and topics from 390B as you’d like. As a refresher, this quarter we’ve focused on the following major academic skills:
Each student will need to schedule a 30-minute session outside of class with their Project 5 partner to discuss ideas for your final project. The discussion is meant to serve as a space to brainstorm ideas and put your thoughts into an outline that may be used when beginning to craft your E-Portfolio. In your 30-minute session, each student will perform the following items with their partner:
We will provide time in-class for you and your partner to schedule your 30-minute session. Your project outline must be submitted by Tuesday, March 8th at 11:59pm PST.
Each student will need to schedule a 30-minute session outside of class with their Project 5 partner to give a mock presentation of their final project as a way to provide peer to peer feedback. In your 30-minute session, each student will perform the following items with their partner:
We will provide time in-class for you and your partner to schedule your 30-minute session. Your peer feedback must be submitted by Sunday, March 13th at 11:59pm PST.
We will meet on Monday, March 14th from 1:00pm-2:20pm PST, where all students will give their E-Portfolio project Presentations.
Please submit a link to your E-Portfolio on Canvas by March 14th at 1:00pm.
To help you navigate this open-ended project, we’ll do a quick check-in during lecture on Tuesday, March 8th. At that point you do not need to have an E-Portfolio or presentation prepared: all we want to see is that you’ve spent some time reflecting on your CSE experience and have identified the five required elements above that you want to talk about (two academic skills, a concrete example for each, and a cool technical topic). You’ll also have a chance to ask any questions you have about the E-Portfolio or presentation. It’s okay to change your mind about the five elements after the check-in, but we encourage you to spend time reflecting early to make the process easier on yourself.
There are 60 points total, divided as follows:
As an open-ended presentation, the majority of the feedback you receive from the course staff will be qualitative. However, you will also be given a grade based on how well you addressed the above requirements in your E-Portfolio and how much effort you put into meaningful reflections about your time in CSE. The relative weights for the presentation grade are as follows: