My Vitals

Motivations

• The field of computing today is scarcely recognizable compared to the field 50 years ago.
  • Many feel the pace of the field is only accelerating as we move forwards.
  • Studying computing now lets you take part in driving forward not only the field of computing, but of all the modern fields with utilize computing.
    • Which is basically everything!
• Programming is highly creative!
  • Once you have the basics down, the only barriers to what you can create involve your own patience and time
  • Few creative endeavors require less outside resources, or allow you to reuse old content so easily

What Could You Make?

• Take a moment to pause and think
• Envision yourself at the end of this semester, a capable, if perhaps slow, programmer
• What is one tool or program that you might create that would be useful to you in your every day life?
• Take a few minutes to think, and then introduce yourself to your neighbor and share with them your ideas

A Growth Mindset

• People enter this course with a variety of initial experiences
  • This course is built for an individual entering with zero coding experience!
    • I’m endeavoring to break concepts down into as digestible chunks as possible
  • Coming in with more experience? You are welcome as well!
    • Help others! Nothing solidifies understanding like explaining to someone else.
    • Take advantage of the various extension opportunities and contests
    • Class/section time is not for impressing me or your section leader. Contribute to the learning environment.
• Everyone can learn to program. It is all about growing in your understanding.

Managing the Frustration

• Growing and learning any new skill involves frustration
• You can see where you want to be, but you aren’t there yet, and it is tough
• You will absolutely become frustrated in this course
  • Code is unforgiving
• Take another moment to think through how you can best manage this frustration, and then introduce and share your ideas with a different neighbor!

Succeeding in this course

• Don’t go it alone!
  • Working with peers is invaluable. Create homework groups. Attend your small section meetings. Visit the QUAD center.
• Budget your time carefully
  • The only way to grow at coding is to do coding
  • Programming can often times involve a lot of frustrating troubleshooting or unsuccessful attempts
  • Expect, on average, the full use of WU’s 2-3 hours outside class for every hour in class
• If you are stuck for more than 30 minutes, ask myself or your section leader for help
  • While it is important to give yourself time to troubleshoot, past a certain point continuing to bang your head against a problem just leads to frustration

Squad Goals

Doing so will require that you be able to:

• implement simple algorithms using Python control structures,
• apply decomposition and step-wise refinement techniques,
• design data structures to model information,
• execute all phases of the programming process, including design, implementation, testing and debugging,

Perusall

• 1-2 short content videos posted 2 days before each class
  • Around 10 min each
• The expectation is that you have watched those videos and thought some about that content before arriving to class
  • We are going to be spending class time interacting with and demonstrating the content, not introducing the content
• A Perusall assignment is due before class starts each day, to ensure you have watched and interacted with these content videos
• Get full points by watching them and asking questions or responding to questions or prompts myself or others have left

Attendance

• Each day when you come in to class, you will fill out a quick poll, which will then place you into a group for the day
• Filling out the poll and participating in your group gets you full points for the day
• Some days will also have a bonus question, which, if your group answers correctly, gets you some extra credit
• Will start officially on Wednesday

Practice

• Falls into two categories:
  • Problem Sets: smaller, more focused assignments
    • Graded on standard, numeric scales
  • Projects: larger, more integrative assignments
    • Graded on a more qualitative scale (next slide)
• All will be due on Mondays at 11:59pm
• Submissions of both will be handled through GitHub Classroom
  • Learning how to do this in class
• 3 cumulative late days over the entire semester without penalty then penalties enacted for each subsequent day late
• Extensions for any reason need to be requested and approved by myself

Project Sneak Peeks!

Project Scoring

Sections

• Everyone will be placed into small sections of 8-10 students, with one section leader
• All section leaders are students who took and excelled in this course
• Will meet as a group with your section leader once a week for an hour to go over and work on problems
  • These meetings will be on Wednesdays or Thursdays
  • Poll out today where you can enter in your availability on these days so that we can get people placed into sections
• Section leaders will also serve as a secondary source you can ask for help or guidance from throughout the week
  • This tutoring is part of their job! Don’t hesitate to ask them for some extra assistance!
• Planning to start section meetings next week

Tests

Communication

• I have had strong success recently channeling class communication (announcements, questions, answers, etc.) through a class Discord server
  • Invite instructions will be announced on Canvas
  • Totally free to sign up and use
  • If you already use Discord, you can create another account to switch between, or you can use your existing account
• Will be the main online location for announcements and questions and answers.
• Has support for code-blocks when talking about code by surrounding code in triple backticks:

  • ```python
    this is formatted nicely as code
    ``` 

Working Together and Academic Honesty

• You are always welcome and encouraged to work alongside others enroute to finding a solution to a problem. But, your submitted work needs to be your own.
• The most effective way to accomplish this is to:
  1. Not look at solutions or program code that is not your own.
  2. Not share your solution code with other students.
  3. Indicate on your submitted assignment any assistance you received or who you worked alongside.

Generative AI

• You are free in this class to use things like ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot to assist you in writing, understanding, or troubleshooting code
• However:
  • LLMs make mistakes, and you need to understand the code to be able to catch them.
  • You will not be able to use these tools on the tests, so ensure that you can do without.
• Assignments will have a field at the top where you can provide a link to the chat transcript if you used one. If you used an AI that doesn’t provide a transcript, state as much.

Diving In

Effective Communication

• To communicate effectively with someone or something, you really need two layers of communication:
  • A shared language or method of conveying information
    • The English alphabet, for example
    • In our case, Python
  • A joint agreement about what constitutes meaning
    • Need ways to limit confusion or misunderstanding
      • Following syntax
      • Following conventions
    • Being able to explain things clearly and unambiguously