Course Startup Notes

Hal Perkins, Au09

This is an attempt to write down a list of all the things that go into starting up a course these days. Partially this is just to see how much junk is really involved, but also it may be useful as a checklist for others. The specific inspiration was to write down everything it took to get CSE 444 launched in Au09.

There are (too) many ways to do many of these things and a lot of it is only documented by folklore or persists from days when the CSE department rolled their own and there were no campus-wide facilities for things like online turnin or mailing lists. This is just personal preference, with a bias towards jettisoning historical baggage and doing things in standard ways that students see in other departments and courses when possible. I'd be happy for any pointers about how to do things better.

• Best initial source for links: CSE faculty info page: http://www.cs.washington.edu/info/facstaff/
• Initial links to course specific information: myuw page: http://myuw.washington.edu/

TAs

• Course coordinator sends out signup requests a few weeks before the quarter
• Once TAs are assigned (http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ta-home/ta-assignment/), contact them to be sure the assignment is OK and they can attend necessary sections, lectures, etc.

Computing facilities

• General info: support web page: http://www.cs.washington.edu/lab/support/docs/uwcseinstr.html
• Course computing needs: http://www.cs.washington.edu/lab/course-computing/. Lab coordinator (course-computing@cs) sends out request for info a few weeks before the quarter and usually wants details and/or confirmation of previous setups very quickly.
• File space: There is a set of directories in the unix file space /cse/courses/csennn/yyqq where non-web course files can be kept. Here, nnn is the course number (444, etc.), yy is the year (09), qq is the quarter (au, wi, sp, su). The unix file system is linked as the O: disk from most windows desktops - map a network drive to \\ntdfs\cs if it isn't.
• Student project space: See the support web page. Space at /projects/instr/yyqq/csennn. Unix groups for student projects are csennna, csennnb, etc. Support will create the top-level yyqq/csennn directory. Instructors or TAs need to create subdirectories a, b, c, ... for groups csennna, csennnb, csennnc, ..., and assign students to groups using their CSE account ids.

Communications

• Course web site: In the CSE unix file system. Location is /cse/www/education/courses/nnn/yyqq. There are aliases so that csennn/yyqq points to the same place as nnn/yyqq. There is also an alias csennn/CurrentQtr that points to the directory for the current quarter, and a web browser aimed at www.cs.washington.edu/nnn goes to this link. Don't use CurrentQtr in any URLs on web pages since it will move around. Relative links are best, of course, but hard code yyqq when needed. Support will create the top-level directory for each quarter and put an almost-empty index.html page there. Support web pages have information about how to protect directories so they can only be read by authorized users if desired (.htaccess magic files).
• Mailing lists: Click on "request class email list" in class resources box on the myuw page. That automatically sets up a mailman list with registered students as members, and this membership is updated as students add and drop. Need to manually add TAs to the mailing list and give them admin authority if you want them to handle requests. I like to use mailing lists for low-traffic notes from course staff to students, not for high-volume discussions from everyone.
• Discussion board: Catalyst gopost (https://catalysttools.washington.edu/gopost/). I restrict this to uw-only (but no reason to limit to the students in the class). Be sure to add TAs as moderators/admins. I try to channel generally useful discussions here, instead of individual email exchanges. Idea is that everyone in the class can benefit from what's posted and help each other out, and keep the course staff from being the communications bottleneck. Depending on the students this might be a real discussion, or sometimes just a forum questions and pronouncements from course staff. Individuals can configure their list options so that postings are mailed to them if they want that lots-of-email experience.
• Online turnin: Catalyst collectit (https://catalysttools.washington.edu/collectit). Restricted to only students in the class. Give TAs admin permissions so they can at least download assignments.
• Grades: Catalyst gradebook (https://catalysttools.washington.edu/gradebook). Give TAs permissions needed to add assignments and record scores. Students can look up grades posted here, and tell them they're responsible for letting us know if they find any errors in our records.

Most of these tools use the student's UW netid, which may not be the same as their CSE userid.