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<h1 id="online-course-structure">Online Course Structure</h1>
<p><a href="index.html">Go up to the CS 2150 page</a> (<a href="index.md">md</a>)</p>
<p>Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, President Ryan <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/university-moves-all-courses-online-urges-students-return-home">issued guidance on March 11th, 2020</a>, that in-person classes and in-person labs were canceled, and directed that all courses were to continue in an online format. This document describes how CS 2150 will adapt to an online format.</p>
<p>The quick details (read below for detailed information):</p>
<ul>
<li>The lab assignments will continue as-is, although lab 7 (IBCM) will be due the following week</li>
<li>There will not be a midterm 2, but there will be a final exam; details on the final to follow</li>
<li>Lectures will be recorded and available via <a href="https://collab.its.virginia.edu/portal/site/c7acc486-f2bd-418a-ad92-c91ae5e03503/page/b4106bc2-7a67-4670-bd1b-56737d16b601">Collab's Lecture Capture</a>; students can watch them at any time</li>
<li>Professor Bloomfield will be on <a href="https://zoom.us">Zoom</a> during the lecture periods (M/W/F 10-11 and 1-2) to answer questions about the lecture content</li>
<li>Labs on Tuesdays will basically become extended office hours</li>
<li>The TAs will be online during the office hours (and lab times) to answer questions about the labs; you still register via the office hours queue, and they will contact you via <a href="https://slack.com">Slack</a> or <a href="https://zoom.us">Zoom</a>, depending on what type of help is needed</li>
<li>See the <a href="https://collab.its.virginia.edu/portal/site/c7acc486-f2bd-418a-ad92-c91ae5e03503/page/077f787c-07f6-47b5-818d-13beb2387ec4">Collab main page</a> on the right hand side for how to join the Slack workspace and the Zoom channel (information on the latter will be available soon)</li>
</ul>
<p><strong><em>If you don't have broadband at home,</em></strong> please email me (Professor Bloomfield at aaron@virginia.edu) with your mailing address, and I will mail you the necessary course materials on a USB key. (Those materials will be: the pre-recorded lectures, the git repo, and the VirtualBox image).</p>
<hr />
<h4 id="updates">Updates</h4>
<p>Any updates will be posted here so that people know what has changed in this document.</p>
<ul>
<li>Wed, 3/18 @ 8 pm: updated the "TA office hours" section</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p>And now for the detailed version...</p>
<p><strong>Patience, please:</strong> This is as new to us as it is to you. Please be patient as we work out the kinks in the system. We want you to do the work and learn from it -- that's the whole point of the course. If giving everybody an extension on an assignment helps toward that goal, then we certainly will do so. We may find that the system(s) we use for office hours get overloaded -- if so, we'll correct that, but that correction may not take effect until the following day. If the systems all get overloaded right before something is due, we aren't going to penalize the entire class because Slack (or Zoom or Collab) crashed.</p>
<p><strong>Lecture recordings:</strong> Recorded lectures will continue to be available via <a href="https://collab.its.virginia.edu/portal/site/c7acc486-f2bd-418a-ad92-c91ae5e03503/page/b4106bc2-7a67-4670-bd1b-56737d16b601">Collab's Lecture Capture</a>, approximately 24 hours before the scheduled lecture period. For reasons explained below (at the very bottom of this page), the remaining content will be the recorded lectures from <em>last</em> semester. Students can watch these at their leisure. Note that all the in-person lectures, meaning the ones from before spring break, are in a "Lectures prior to spring break" folder (it's easy to miss). As mentioned above, if you are unable to download them due to bandwidth issues, please email me (Professor Bloomfield at aaron@virginia.edu) with your mailing address, and I will mail you a USB key with all the lectures on it. A single lecture is between 100Mb to 200Mb in size, and there are likely to be 16 lectures this semester (plus an exam review session). The first recorded lecture will be available approximately 24 hours before the Friday, March 20th lecture times, since there are no class sessions prior to that Friday.</p>
<p><strong>Lectures:</strong> During the lecture times (M/W/F 10-11 and 1-2), Professor Bloomfield will be online to answer questions for an online "lecture discussion". The intent is that students will have watched the recording <em>already</em>, and can ask questions if anything is unclear. Due to the fact that there are 370 students and one professor, these questions will need to be about the lecture content itself; questions about the labs should be asked during TA office hours. We expect to be using <a href="https://zoom.us/">Zoom</a> for those with sufficient bandwidth (and assuming the service can handle the load), and <a href="https://slack.com/">Slack</a> for those with low bandwidth. See below, under "private contact info" for the details about Zoom meetings and the Slack workspace. Note that there were two lectures that I was going to miss already (Mon, 3/23 @ 1 and Fri, 3/27 @ 10); I already had coverage lined up. But with the move to the online format, it is likely that I will not be able to use that coverage, and I will likely have an alternative time for those two lectures, or have TAs cover for me. Details about that to follow. The first lecture discussions will be held on Friday, March 20th, since there are no CS 2150 classes prior to that. Note that if nobody joins the lecture discussion by 15 minutes past the hour, then the zoom meeting will be ended.</p>
<p><strong>Zoom notes:</strong> The intent is to have the lecture discussion times be via Zoom. You can see instructions for how to set it up <a href="https://uvacollab.screenstepslive.com/s/help/m/integrations/l/1214666-tips-for-attending-class-in-zoom">here</a>. This will be a question and answer period, since the lecture recordings will already have been posted. I will have it capturing my computer screen, which will generally be on the repo slides. You can use it without video to lower bandwidth, as I will narrate what slide I am on. Please start with mute on, and only unmute it when you are speaking -- this will minimize background noise. If a lot of people are on the Zoom call, then you will need to "raise your hand" rather than have everybody talk at once -- to do so, click on Participants in the Zoom window, then on Raise Hand. Lastly, you can participate in a Zoom meeting with a telephone -- dial-in numbers can be found <a href="https://virginia.zoom.us/zoomconference">here</a>, and see below, under "private contact info" for how to get the meeting ID.</p>
<p><strong>Exams:</strong> The second midterm will be cancelled; note that this will necessitate change in the overall course weightings. Specifically, the labs will take up a greater percentage of the final course grade. There will be a final exam, but it is unclear at this point how this is going to work.</p>
<p><strong>Lab times:</strong> Lab times on Tuesdays will basically become online office hours; see below for how those will work. If they get very busy, the TAs staffing them will help those that are registered for that particular lab section first (based on the time of day).</p>
<p><strong>Time zones:</strong> If you are in a different time zone, you may not be able to virtually attend your particular lab time to get help. For example, those on the west coast who are in the 8 a.m. lab section would have to log in around 5 a.m. Pacific time. Likewise, people who are out of the country will have greater time zone access issues. In this case, submit a support request with the particular lab time(s) that you can reasonably virtually attend, and we will consider you "in" that lab for the rest of the semester. If your time zone causes a problem with the evening TA office hours or the lecture times, submit a support request for that as well, and we will find a solution on a case-by-case basis. Please note that we will need some lead time (a day or so) to find a solution; if you email us an hour before the lab is due, we aren't going to be able to find a solution in time.</p>
<p><strong>Accommodations:</strong> If you need accommodations regarding online content delivery, please send me (Professor Bloomfield, aaron@virginia.edu) an email listing what those necessary accommodations are. This could be the need for video captioning, for example. Please do this EVEN IF you have worked with SDAC on this -- some accommodations are handled internally by SDAC, but now that we are moving to online classes, I need to be sure that I know those those needed accommodations are. You don't need to tell me about things not related to online delivery (extended test taking time, flexible deadlines, etc.) -- those I know, and will take care of when we get to that point.</p>
<p><strong>Labs:</strong> Lab 7 (IBCM) was supposed to be done the week of Monday, March 16th, but is now going to be done the <em>following</em> week (the week of Monday, March 23rd). There are no assignments due the week of March 16th, although there will be a recorded lecture and lecture discussion that Friday. There are two assembly labs in the repo, labs 8 and 9. Because we are skipping the second midterm, the assembly labs will be done the weeks of March 30th and April 6th.</p>
<p><strong>Due dates:</strong> To adapt to the new online course structure, all pre-labs and in-labs will be due at 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning. This will allow students to get help both via the regular office hours (Sunday and Monday nights) as well as during the day on Tuesday. Post-labs will still be due at 10 a.m. on Friday.</p>
<p><strong>TA office hours:</strong> The TAs will still "staff" office hours, but virtually. TA office hours will focus on helping with the labs. Students will need to be using three separate systems to utilize office hours (sorry we couldn't lower it): (1) the <a href="https://libra.cs.virginia.edu/~pedagogy/queue.php">office hours queue</a> just as before, (2) the <a href="https://uvacs2150.slack.com">Slack workspace</a> (if you need to get an invite, see the <a href="https://collab.its.virginia.edu/portal/site/c7acc486-f2bd-418a-ad92-c91ae5e03503/page/077f787c-07f6-47b5-818d-13beb2387ec4">Collab main page</a> on the right hand side), and <a href="https://zoom.us">Zoom</a> (you just have to have it set up; the TAs will provide the links to join). Students who want help will register in the [office hours queue], just as before. When a TA is ready to help a student, the TA will contact the student via a direct (private) message in the Slack workspace -- so the students will have to already be on the Slack workspace. The TAs may or may not chat via Slack, depending on their preference and the type of help needed. The TAs may also start up a Zoom session, in particular if the TAs needs to be able to chat by voice and/or see the student's code; the TAs will send the link (via Slack direct message) to join their Zoom session. The students will likely want to share their computer screen so that the TAs can look at their code. If the student has low bandwidth, there are a few options: (1) chat via Slack, possibly by uploading a screenshot or two, or (2) use zoom, but no video. Under no circumstances are students to initiate this contact -- unfortunately, we just don't have the staffing levels required for the TAs to be able to handle everybody contacting them at the same time.</p>
<p><strong>Professor office hours:</strong> These will be replaced by the online lecture discussions (M/W/F 10-11 and 1-2). With the relative size of the class (370 students) and one professor, it is not likely that I will be able to help debug a significant amount of students' code. Individual issues will have to be via <a href="https://libra.cs.virginia.edu/~pedagogy/support.php">support request</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Things that won't change:</strong> There are a few parts of the course that will continue just as they have been for the entire semester: Piazza (and the responses), assignment submission, and the various course tools.</p>
<p><strong>Who should feel my wrath?</strong> Well, it depends on what the wrath is about. The different online aspects are for different parts of the course:</p>
<ul>
<li>General high-level questions can still be asked on Piazza, just as before.</li>
<li>Questions related to the lecture content can be asked during the Zoom meeting during lecture times (M/W/F 10-11 and 1-2, although a few of those times will need to be cancelled, as explained above).</li>
<li>Questions related to the labs should be asked during TA office hours (Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 6-10) or during lab times (Tuesdays from 8 am to 8 pm); this will be via the <a href="https://libra.cs.virginia.edu/~pedagogy/queue.php">office hours queue</a> and the Slack workspace.</li>
<li>Questions related to your specific situation should be done via a <a href="https://libra.cs.virginia.edu/~pedagogy/support.php">support request</a>. We realize that discussing some of these issues in person is better, but we can't do that, of course.</li>
<li>Questions about the exam(s), specifically regarding reviewing material for it, will either be during TA office hours or during an exam review session (details on the latter to follow once the exam details are known).</li>
<li>Questions related to how this semester is all going to work out should be directed towards a <a href="https://www.crystalballfree.com/">crystal ball</a> or a <a href="https://www.free-tarot-reading.net/free">tarot deck</a>. If you are joining the Zoom meetings, you can click on the "Online Meetings" tool in the Collab workspace.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Private contact info:</strong> This repo is public, and I don't want any online troll joining the Slack workspace or the Zoom meetings. You can find the information for joining those on the <a href="https://collab.its.virginia.edu/portal/site/c7acc486-f2bd-418a-ad92-c91ae5e03503/page/077f787c-07f6-47b5-818d-13beb2387ec4">Collab main page</a> on the right hand side (Collab login required). Note that you can download the Zoom client for your computer <a href="https://zoom.us/support/download">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Lectures, redux:</strong> The lecture recordings for the remaining part of the semester will have to be from last semester. The only difference you will notice is that I will occasionally answer a question asked by a student (I'm always careful to either repeat the question for the recording or answer it in such a way that one can tell what the question was). There are a number of reasons for using last semester's recordings:</p>
<ul>
<li>I don't have sufficient quality recording equipment at home to record them myself</li>
<li>My upstream bandwidth is pretty pitiful, and I would not be able to actually upload them</li>
<li>Talking to a laptop in an empty room makes for a boring lecture -- as with any performance, having an audience makes for a better experience.</li>
<li>By using last semester's lectures, I can postal mail them to students who do not have the bandwidth to download them.</li>
</ul>
<p>I realize that this is not ideal, but -- considering the circumstances -- I think it is the best option available.</p>
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