Hello and welcome to week two in the class. You’re watching this video most likely on Monday or Tuesday. I’m actually recording it on Friday just to get a jump on things for this coming week with Labor Day weekend.
First off, thank you everybody for doing the language survey very quickly. That was really helpful for me to get you into the correct classes on Canvas. If you’re not in the correct class on Canvas right now, please let me know so we can make sure we get that done.
There are a few things that you’ve got left to do this week. First off, we’d like you to make sure you read the syllabus in the course and ask us if you have any questions. We’d also like you to introduce yourselves on Piazza. The biggest reason we need you to do that is to make sure that you have access to Piazza. Later in the semester we’ll use Piazza primarily to post really quick announcements so that everybody can see them and discuss them. And then finally there’s the course readiness quiz that just confirms that you’ve got everything you need to be successful in the course. All of those are part of module zero and they’re all due on Tuesday, September 3rd at 11:59 PM, so make sure you get those taken care of very quickly if you haven’t already, so you’re ready to go.
Coming up this week, you’ll be working on the first module in the course, which is the Hello World module. Each module in this course consists of five parts, four of which are graded. You’ll have the tutorial that’s built in Codio that introduces the concept or task. You’ll have the quiz in Canvas that reinforces it and makes sure that you understand it. Then you’ll have a project in Codio where you can apply that skill and finally you’ll have a confirmation quiz that confirms that you’re done with the project before you reach the solution. The reason we added the confirmation quiz is to make sure that if you accidentally submit your Codio project early, you’ll have a chance to go back and have us unlock it before you do that confirmation quiz. But as soon as you complete the confirmation quiz, it will unlock the solution so we won’t be able to unlock your project after that. All of those projects for module one are due on Monday, September 9th, and from here on out we’ll plan on having one module due each week.
Another thing you may have noticed this week is that both the GTAs in this course, Josh and Kyle have announced their office hours. You can see their office hours up here behind me. Their office hours are held in the engineering building either 1117 or 1119. Those are both in the computer science area back around where the supercomputer is. They will also have office hours available via Zoom, which is a web conferencing software. So if you can’t be there in person, you can always connect with them via Zoom. It’s probably a good idea to send them an email as well. Just to let them know you’re coming, but they should be available on Zoom at any time during their office hours, for you to drop in, answer a question, anything like that. The way we’ve set up our office hours is they will have a waiting room in the Zoom area and so if they’re working with another student you may be in the waiting room for a little bit while they wrap up with that student before they bring you in, just in case that student is sharing code or solutions to a project that you shouldn’t be able to see. If you have any questions or any trouble with the office hours, please talk to the GTAs or let me know and we’ll take care of that.
I also have office hours right now. I’m just doing virtual office hours on a by appointment basis, so if you need to meet with me or have any questions for me, you can always send me an email or schedule a time to meet with me and I would gladly meet with you remotely as well.
Finally a quick thing about this course, we do welcome late enrollments in this course, so if you have any friends or know anybody that needs an extra class or is dropping a class and needs to build some hours. Or if they’re just interested in learning programming, it’s not too late to sign up for this class. We definitely would welcome late enrollments up until the enrollment deadline of September 16th so feel free to tell friends, people that you know in your major. If there’s anybody that would be interested in this course, we would be more than happy to have them in this course.
That’s really all the announcements I’ve got for week two. If you have any questions as always, you can reach me on Piazza. You can talk to the GTAs during their office hours or you can send me an email directly any time. Other than that, I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend. I hope the cats won, and we will see you all next week.