Course Number: CSE 190Z
Course Title: STARS Pre-Computer Science Workshop - Topics in CSE
Offering: Fall 2017
Class:
Time: Mondays 5:30 - 6:20 pm and Fridays 9:30 - 11:20 am,
Location: MEB 245
Special Dates:
Credit Hours: 3 (CR/NC)
Prerequisites: None
Description: Students will practice the essential skills required to be successful in computer science including the general problem solving process, computational thinking, persistence, communication and collaboration, creativity as well as time management. Topics discussed in this class will include abstraction, managing complexity, processing of data, algorithms and programming, debugging and learning the programming tools used in CS 142/143.
Final: No standard final, instead a final project.
Fundamentally this class is about building confidence in a number of areas: communication, time management, and computational thinking. By the end of the term, students will
Name | Role | Office Hours | Office | |
Lauren Bricker | Instructor | T/Th 3:30-4:30 | CSE 450 | bricker@cs.washington.edu, bricker@uw.edu (forwards) |
Courtney McKee | TA | W 5:30(ish) - 6:30 | Loew Hall | cmmckee4@uw.edu |
Lisa Vo | TA | Th 2:30-3:30 | HUB Starbucks | lisanvo@uw.edu |
You are expect to attend all classes this quarter. Participation is part of your grade, and you can't be graded on participation if you're not physically present. In addition, my goal is to have this class be largely active learning, engaging, giving you the opportunity to 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 our work periods.
(Portions heavily borrowed from Professor Hacker)
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
I've been a teacher too long and I've heard just about every excuse for why work was not turned in on time. Many of these excuses were technology focused, and even some of them were really out of the students' control
I like how Professor Hacker said 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.
I expect you will...
and... I expect that if your computer does break/get lost/ has trouble, you will
Late work is not 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.
Students will need regular access to a computer with the following software installed. All of it is free, and available for MacOSX, Windows, and Linux.
The following libraries have labs where the software will be installed on the lab machines, should you lose access to your laptop.
This is a CR/NC course. You must earn an 80% or higher to receive credit for this course.
The weighting for your grades will be as follows:
You must earn an 80% or higher to receive credit for this course.
Homework
You will be given an assignment each week on Friday that will be due the following Friday. Homework assignments will include desk work and may include some programming, some of which will be done collaboratively.
Quizzes
The purpose of the quizzes is two fold:
Quizzes will be given every other Friday in various forms
Final Project
You will be given a larger assignment at the end of the term that will account for a significant portion of your grade. This will be broken into three parts
Participation
Participation will be both by your attendance and and active participation 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.
In addition, at least one assignment (Teach the Class) will also have a graded component based on your participation in that assignment in particular.
The grade book will be kept on Canvas and will be updated regularly; please check it to be sure scores have been recorded correctly.
If you have a problem with 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.
Your participation grade will include your active participation in class, as well as your participation in our discussion boards. We expect students to come to class with relevant ideas, and questions related to the class topics.
We expect participating students to be active participants in the learning process. The questions below are designed to help guide you.
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.
“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 teacher, I need to be able to evaluate *your* work. Thus, unless I otherwise specify that you are working in a group, 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 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.
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 all of us engaged in the life of the mind take the utmost care that the ideas and expressions of ideas of other people always be appropriately handled, and, where necessary, cited. When ideas or materials of others are used, they must be cited. The format is not that important - as long as the source material can be located and the citation verified, it's OK. What is important is that the material be cited. In any situation, if you have a question, please feel free to ask.
The University of Washington has an entire page on Academic Misconduct on their Community Standards and Student Conduct Page. Please acquaint yourself with the University of Washington's resources on academic honesty, and in particular how academic misconduct will be reported (which has been changed for 2017).
Important reading: Some students at Lakeside HS wrote the Collaboration Guidelines for CS document in 2016. This document has some clear examples of what to do and not to do and will be required reading for Computer Science courses.
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 instructors (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.
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.
It is very important to us that you maintain your mental wellness throughout the course. A few points are not worth losing sleep over. Everyone on the course staff is available to chat, and you can always attend office hours for a non-academic conversation if necessary. You can use the following resources if you find you need help beyond the course staff:
To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services: 448 Schmitz, 206-543-8924 (V/TTY). If you have a letter from DSS indicating that you have a disability which requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to me so we can discuss the accommodations you might need in the class.
Academic accommodations due to disability will not be made unless the student has a letter from DSS specifying the type and nature of accommodations needed.
Some of the text in the Participation section was borrowed from Benjamin Mako Hill's Teaching: Assessment materials