Post Spring Break Updates Proposal

I hope that this message finds you well.  If you are not well and think that I may be able to help you reach out to me.

The TAs and I have discussed the policy changes which I am going to propose to you here.  One subject we debated was whether or not to maintain some semblance of a schedule. It has been argued that a schedule could both help students stay on pace, and aid the TAs and I in our efforts to effectively help everyone who needs it.  It is critical to note that we understand that everyone will be in different situations over the coming months. As a result, if you need additional time flexibility for some reason, rest assured there will be a mechanism to achieve that time flexibility.  If you are in less dire straits, one way to help us all out is to stay on top of things.

I have done a great deal of thinking over the past week about how to best shape 231 and 425 for the remainder of the semester.  Shooting for normalcy seems like a mistake to me. Rest assured, I will not pretend that things are somehow normal. Still, I want to pass along to you my proposal for how I think 425 should proceed from here.  Of course, given that as COVID-19 changes the landscape, so too this plan may change. In many ways this is simply a best case scenario plan. We understand that the number one priority is everyone’s health and well being and not 425.

On the surface, if any course can transition to online, it should be 425.  With Prof. Grossman’s recorded video lectures, I feel that we have a solid backbone.  I am still concerned, however. When I ran the course last summer, the most remarkable thing to me was how well the introduction to Racket went.  Students were having fun with the Home Is Where The Heart Is Warm Up. It was stunning. I fear that a fair amount of the smoothness was due to just having someone readily available to get over the bumps (Using Dr. Racket, Racket Syntax, The Racket Image Library).  I feel as though the “How are we going to best deliver help?” question is worthy of its own separate discussion, and I want to get the syllabus change proposal out without more delay. However, trust me, the “help at a distance” problem is high on the priority list.

One pain point I can easily see developing is that things could get frustrating.  I strongly believe that much less is gained when someone simply tells you the answer to your problem.  It is far more effective, in my option, to have someone ask you questions or nudge in the right direction.  So, if it becomes frustrating when I or a TA keeps asking you nebulous questions instead of just telling you how to edit your broken program: 1) feel free to let us know that you are frustrated (feedback is always useful), and 2) please know that it would be much easier for us to just give you the answer, too.  I spent hours going back and forth with a student a couple of days ago on piazza on a problem. I’m might have been a bit frustrating, but hopefully it was more productive in the end. Helping everyone to complete all of the programming assignments without simply handing out the answers will be legit difficult to achieve, especially at a distance.  However, I propose that we try.

Midterm Exam: Most of you completed the coding exam midterm before break.  My plan is to have the remaining handful complete the online Coursera exam:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/programming-languages/supplement/eOh5p/information-about-the-exam-required-reading

I will create accounts and send out logins to the handful of students who still need to take the midterm.  Coursera has a limit of taking the exam once per day. We will make this available when the course opens up on March 30th.  I propose that students would have 3 days to complete so that they could retake the exam if they wanted to. If that time window does not work for a student, we can work something out.  This exam would be open notes, open coding tools, open internet, you name it… with the exception of not seeking out help from another human being. Put another way, you can search for whatever information you want, but you may NOT post a question to stack overflow or directly ask a question of another human being.  Does that make sense? This should not really be a problem as it seems like a pretty liberal policy and if what I recall about taking the exam is correct, it was relatively easy. To be clear, you are allowed to take the practice exam and the final on your account, if you would like.

Final Exam: I propose to make the final exam optional. The current trajectory is a median grade of an A+ which makes me very happy.  If we stay on that curve most would not need to bother with the final which would be nice. For those who would like to take the final exam in the hopes of improving their grade, I proposed that we follow the same Coursera process outlined in the Midterm Exam above.

Attendance: I have no plans to run a synchronous course where everyone joins in a video call at the originally scheduled time.  There is enough evidence to indicate this would not be effective. I will be scrambling to try to keep the course somewhat asynchronously interactive, but I will not be taking attendance.  I suppose I could say that your Participation/Attendance from the first half should count as the Participation/Attendance for the whole semester. However, who is to say that just because someone missed 5 classes in the first half (it is hard to imagine anyone doing this with a course that only meets once a week, but still...) who is to say that that student wasn’t going to have perfect attendance for the remainder?  It seems that the most reasonable thing to do here is to just assume everyone would have had perfect attendance for the remainder.  This policy, combined with the three free misses, should leave most with the complete 10% in this category.

Prep: On the surface, it would seem that the S&Q mechanism might not need to change that much.  I believe the prep is useful. They are available online. I am proposing to add a bit of flexibility here.   I am also proposing to add an automatic no penalty week extension for the S&Q preps. Of course, completing the prep earlier will increase the probability of your questions being included in whatever videos or other content we produce on the subject. 

The updated proposed schedule can be found here: https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~cosgroved/courses/cse425/s20/calendar.html

There is not a lot of flexibility here.  There is a ton to do and now one less week to do it in.  I have essentially combined the last two weeks into one.

Studios and Labs: Studios and Labs already have an automatic one week extension.  I can add another week (up until the end of the semester at which point we will run out of time) to provide some more flexibility. Further, as I stated above, we understand that we are all in different situations.  If you find that your situation requires greater time flexibility, we will have a mechanism for you to acquire it. If you can stay on top of things, it will benefit everyone. 

Advanced availability of assignments: Under normal circumstances, I prefer to release the assignments at a particular pace throughout the semester.  This is no ordinary semester, so I will do my best to make more assignments available sooner for anyone who would like to get ahead in 425.

Stressed? If you find yourself getting stressed out by 425, reach out to me.  I believe we can come up with something reasonable.

Getting Help: We are working out how help can be best delivered. Look for more announcements coming soon.  I simply wanted to get the policy change proposal out first and then move on to help scheduling.

Resilience Required: There will undoubtedly be bumps in the road.  Questions of the form: “What on earth are we going to do when students have git conflicts?” have been rattling around in my brain a lot about recently.  I am confident that, although it will be painful at times, we will get through this. 

Please indicate your thoughts on this proposal below.  There is an additional link for anonymous feedback (Links to an external site.). As conditions change we may need to adjust.  Please trust that we will all be reasonable.

I hope that you all are safe, isolated, and well.

     Best wishes,
     Dennis