Principles for Remote Learning in COMP142

The following are some general principles and procedures that we will be using for remote learning in COMP142.

A Word About This Class

This is a challenging course. The material may be difficult. It is foundational in the sense that if you continue to take computer science classes, they will all build on the knowledge and skills you learn in this class.

Programming is a critical skill that all other computer science classes will depend on you possessing. Once you leave COMP142, it will be assumed that you know Java and are familiar with the topics and techniques that you learned in this class.

Even if you don’t take other computer science classes, once you leave COMP142, you will have a more mature and full view of how computer programs are constructed.

Learning

People learn best when they want to learn and when they invent ideas themselves. There is a large body of research that supports this. My role in your learning is not to dispense my knowledge to you through lecture, but rather, guide you through new concepts and serve as an expert that you can rely on to help you understand and unpack complex ideas.

There are a lot of classes that you take where you can “learn” and be successful by memorizing things. Others where creative output is evaluated subjectively. Computer science is not like either of these types of classes - you will be creating things, but they will objectively be correct or not.

I’m putting both of these things out there because I want to impress upon you that you will need to work to learn in this class. I’m not trying to scare you or intimidate you, just prepare you for the fact that you will only get out of this class what you put in.

My Availability

I have open office hours four hours per week. These are on the syllabus and on my website.

Beyond these, I am available via Slack, email, and my calendly (all linked from my homepage). I generally try not to respond to Slack/email messages on the weekend or late in the evening, but I do pay close attention to both.

If my office hours don’t work for you, or you need to set up some alternative time to meet, please reach out to me. I am conscious of the fact that time zones may make things difficult for you to meet during standard business hours during Central time. I am willing to schedule time in my evenings if necessary for students with large time zone differences.

Community Building

It is extremely important to me that we are able to form a sense of community in this class. Since the course will stretch you at times, it will be important for you to be supported. Part of this support will come from me, another part from the tutors, but another part should come from your peers.

Beyond a support system, a large part of this class will involve you doing reading or activities ahead of time that we will use for discussion. Having productive and meaningful discussions in class will require us to have a sense of community.

As we go through the semester, we will experiment with different methods of building community. But initially, here are some principles and guidelines that I’ll try to follow:

• First, please turn your camera on. Visual cues from you are important to me, and also important to your peers. It is difficult to feel connected to a group of people if you can’t see them.

  Of course, I understand that you may have legitimate reasons for face-muting. That’s fine! But as a general rule, I prefer people to have their cameras on.

  If everyone is face-muted, it will be almost impossible for us to have discussions.

• Class atmosphere: my ideal is that class is relaxed and feels more like a meeting than a lecture, even if at times I am lecturing. In order for us to achieve this, you need to feel comfortable participating. If there is something that I am doing that makes you feel like you can’t, either reach out to me (if you feel comfortable), or send me anonymous feedback via my feedback form.
• Ask questions and don’t be afraid to interrupt. It is okay to interrupt me, either by raising your hand, reaching out over chat, or just speaking over me!
• I will make time for “social moments.” As cringe as it can sometimes be, these sorts of activities do help us to break down some barriers between us.
• We will be doing a lot of pair work. We’ll use breakout rooms for these, so you should have opportunities for 1:1 time with some of your classmates. I’ll try to ask that we don’t always have the same partners.
• The CS program’s Slack workspace will be used for questions and synchronous communication. Please don’t be hesitant to ask questions there, either of me or your peers.
• Slack is also a place where the CS program as a whole will try to build community. There will be talks and events advertised there, as well as general resources.

Inclusivity

An inclusive environment is extremely important to me. Here’s some things that I’m going to do to try to make this class as inclusive as possible:

• Everything will recorded and posted online (private to this class) by default. They will not be available to the rest of Rhodes, though. Recordings will be available between sections by default. If there are reasons that you do not want to be in a recording, please chat with me. If necessary, use my anonymous feedback form, or chat with the TA (who will keep your id private).
• I will try to ensure that recorded classes are close-captioned.
• I will try to minimize tool challenges. Professional software development tools can sometimes be complex and overwhelming, but there is no avoiding their use. We will try to ramp up slowly to them and I will record videos for common uses.
• I will try to be as available as possible for 1:1 time.
  • Office hours: Unlike last semester, where I had large blocks of bookable time, this semester I will be running traditional office hours. During these times, I am online and will start a Zoom meeting with you if you ping me on Slack.
  • Scheduling alternative time: Just reach out to me via email or Slack and let me know that you need to meet. We’ll set up a time that works for you.
• I will be as responsive to Slack as I possibly can be while still maintaining some degree of work/life balance for myself.

Rigor

This is a harder class than COMP141, since it is a foundation for later courses in computer science. In this course, you build programming skills that will be a required part of your toolkit in learning more complex topics in computer science.

In order for you to have a complete picture of what’s happening in the course, I will make sure the schedule is posted and available on Canvas. Canvas will be the source of truth about the class.

You will be expected to be spending around 8 hours/week outside of our meetings on this class (at least an hour/day). In order to be successful on programming projects, you must start them early. Waiting till the last minute will not be a successful strategy.

Communication Resources

• Slack workspace – this is a department resource, used for this class, for department-wide announcements and discussion, and tutoring.
• Canvas – this is the source of truth for schedule and a repository of static information about the class.
• Forum on Piazza – this is a good place to drop questions that can be answered asynchronously by me, tutors, or other students.