Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in CSW 8 and CS 8

Hello and welcome to CSW 8/CS 8!

Below are a few notes that can help you get oriented in the course and address a few commonly asked questions.

🌟 Please read the SYLLABUS first (it’s on GauchoSpace).

Administrative
zyBooks
Accounts
1. Is Piazza used for questions about the material and clarification on the lectures?
2. Is there a code to get an account on Piazza?
Gradescope
Course Components
Weekly Pattern and Planning Your Work

Administrative

Are CS 8 and CSW 8 different? Does this course count the same as the other?

Content-wise they are the same course, the “W” in the title indicates that the course is on the Web, i.e., online. Both courses count as the same course and cover the same material otherwise.

Is CSW 8 going to be asynchronous?

Based on the feedback from students last year as well as our experience with remote and asynchronous learning, we decided to make CSW 8 synchronous. See the “Attendance” section below for more information.

Are the lectures going to be recorded?

For CSW 8, they might sometimes be recorded because it is an online course. There is NO guarantee that we will record every (or indeed, ANY) lecture.

For CS 8, we are NOT recording the lectures as we are prohibited by University rules on this.

Are the labs going to be recorded?

No. For either CSW / CS 8.

I am enrolled in another class that conflicts with CSW 8. Is it a problem?

Yes it IS A PROBLEM. Please see the answer above and the “Attendance” section below for more information.

Do labs happen during the section time?

Yes. CSW 8 Labs are on Wednesdays (online) and CS 8 Labs are on Tuesdays, per your registration information.

How do we check when our lab is?

Can I change/switch my lab section?

ONLY if you clear it with BOTH TAs FIRST!! For CS 8 (the in-person class), this is SUPER IMPORTANT because there is LIMITED PHYSICAL SPACE in these labs!

If you are approved to switch, then there is no need to get a new add code and switch it on GOLD. Please make sure that when you are registering for your zyBook, you select the section that you are going to be attending.

See the “Attendance” section below for more information.

Are lab activities and lab sessions not the same thing?

We refer to the lab section times as lab sessions. The lab activities (LAs) that you complete in zyBooks refer to the lab assignments posted in zyBooks.

zyBooks

Is the reading done on zyBooks?

Yes, zyBooks is our “textbook.”

The access/enrollment code can be found in our syllabus which is on Gauchospace.

Do I have to buy the book if I am re-taking the class?

Contact support@zybooks.com and let them know that you are retaking the course: they might be able to waive your fee (the professor has no control over that aspect).

How do I update my student ID in zyBooks?

You can do it from the My Subscription tab, which you can access from the main zyBooks page that lists all chapters.

Is there an option for students who cannot currently afford the zyBook subscription? Can I defer the purchase of the zyBook?

Below is the information from the zyBook support staff (again, this is outside the professor’s domain…):

Yes, we can accommodate such requests students make! What your student will need to do is follow the directions in Does zyBooks offer temporary subscriptions? to request a four-week temporary subscription. Once approved, they can begin working on their assignments without any issue and can also provide payment at any time to access the book for the remainder of the term.

You can also use the same link to request a two-week free trial of the zyBook subscription if you are unsure if you will stay in the course.

What do the PA, CA and LA mean on the zybook, where are they found? How do I know when they are completed?

PA(Participation Activities),
CA(Challenge Activities),
LA(Lab Activities).

PAs, CAs, LAs, are all found inside the respective sections of the zyBook for this course.

There’s no need to submit the activities anywhere else, just complete them in zyBooksr! .

For PAs and CAs, you will see a checkmark to the right of the title for that activity, once the activity has been properly completed.
For LAs, you will see the score for how many tests for correctness of that lab have passed. Once you see 100%, you have effectively completed that lab.

Note that after you complete the PAs and CAs, zyBook will remove your answers, which is supposed to help you come back and review. Your completion will be recorded but the answers will not be visible to you.

How can we know our progress on zyBooks?

You can also see the overall completion of each of the zyBook activities when you are on the main page of the zyBook (the view that lists all chapters and their sections), which you can get to by clicking on the main title of the book at the top of the page, after My library.

✨ Pro Tip✨ : We recommend spending no more than 2 hours in a row reading through the sections and completing the activities in zyBooks. Your brain will get tired and will need a break. Trust us: even your prof cannot meaningfully work through this material for more than 2 hours or so, so save yourself some time and allow for at least a 30-minute break between the study sessions. HOWEVER, this also means that you SHOULD START YOUR WORK EARLY and NOT LEAVE IT TO THE LAST MINUTE.

Please follow the suggested workflow and the roadmap).

How many chances do we have for each question on zyBooks?

Should we wait to work on zyBooks during lab?

We recommend getting started on them as soon as you can, since we plan to release them at least a day or two early, so you can come prepared with questions.

Note that you won’t be solving all labs during the lab session time. That time is mostly dedicated to the specific breakout room activities, so you need to complete the rest of the labs on your own time, before the deadline.

Is the work in zyBooks graded for completion or accuracy?

Just like the rest of the zyBook activities, the labs are graded for accuracy.

Will we be tested on material in “optional” labs?

No, the materials from those sections labeled “OPTIONAL” will not be on your quizzes.

How do I turn on syntax highlighting in zyLabs?

Accounts

Is Piazza used for questions about the material and clarification on the lectures?

Yes, this is our main communication platform. Guidelines for how to use it are in the Syllabus and in the Posting Guidelines note on Piazza itself. See more information in the “Getting Help” and the “Communication” section below.

Is there a code to get an account on Piazza?

No - there is no need to enter any code. The professor will register you on Piazza once we have settled the waitlist for the course.

NOTE: Your account on Piazza will be your UCSB user-name followed by @umail.ucsb.edu (i.e. not @ucsb.edu).

Gradescope

What is this “Gradescope”??

Gradescope is a web-based tool that we will use for you to submit some of the labs - and more importantly, for your final project. The professor will let you know more about this as we approach the first lab that will use this tool. Again, please note that most of your labs are done and submitted and graded on zyBooks, so Gradescope will only apply to a select few labs.

How many chances do we have to submit on Gradescope?

If we submit our labs onto Gradescope multiple times, will the newest version be the one graded?

Yes, your latest submission will be the one that’s used for grading.

Course Components

Where do I find slides and/or class/lab recordings?

All on our main website - Gauchospace. Look for the playback icon ⏩.

Do we have to download a Python “platform” for this class?

Yes. We will spend the first couple of weeks working within zyBooks and then we will ask you to Download the latest version from python.org.

We will be using IDLE that will be installed with Python as our Integrated Development Environment (IDE). We’ll provide more resources and information about it later in the course.

What will the “reflection” at the end of each week be like and how long do they take?

The reflection usually shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes to complete. The questions will vary each week but there will always be an open-ended question for any feedback/thoughts that you’d like to share with the professor and the TAs/ULAs. It’s a low-stress way to take a look at the past week and the activities for the future week and assess how things are going and what you are learning.

Where do I find the weekly reflections?

They will normally be posted on Gauchospace on Thursday afternoon (starting in Week 2). We will administer them as a Google Form.

Is the reflection graded on completion?

Not quite.

While the reflections are intended as a learning tool for you, since you will receive credit for submitting them, we want to make sure that your answers make sense and that you have put reasonable effort and thought into it.

If you have nonsensical answers, we can give you a lower score for your submission.

How many quizzes will there be each week?

See the notes in the “Quizzes” section below.

I missed a quiz/an in-class activity/a deadline. What do I do?

We do not offer any make-up quizzes/assignments, however, as the Course Syllabus outlines, we will drop the lowest quiz grade. So if you have an unexpected situation that made you miss a quiz, your overall quiz grade for the course will not be affected. Of course, if you miss two or more quizzes, then those will be recorded as zeros.

Please, don’t contact us about it unless you have a documented emergency or a documented, official exception paperwork (for example, a signed letter from your UCSB sports coach with out-of-town tournament dates, etc…). In those cases, just like in cases of documented emergency, please, email the professor (not a TA, not a ULA). Make sure you provide official documentation that shows your name, the reason, and the date of the incident/event.

If there are privacy concerns, the professor will accept official communication from specialized offices at UCSB, such as the DSP office or CAPS.

Weekly Pattern and Planning Your Work

Due Dates

This course has a consistent weekly pattern to help you manage your workload and help you set a consistent schedule for this class. Set those dates and reminders on your calendar to proactively keep track of the assignments yourself. See additional information and resources that we provided on the How to Succeed in CSW 8 page.

Your professor has outlined, in the Syllabus, when zyBooks activities are due (these are hard deadlines) and are expected to be completed. We recommend finishing your work in zyBooks before those times - in other words, try to finish everything the night before it is due, so that you have enough time to ask for help.

In-class quizzes and activities will assume that you have completed the readings and homework activities.

We cannot stress enough how important it is to create a study plan for this course and to follow it consistently.

Around Week 3-4, the course material will begin to pick up its pace and concepts will begin to get more involved and complicated, so you need to make sure that you’ve allocated enough time in your schedule to ensure that you can keep up with the course.

Quizzes

There will be 6 or 7 quizzes for this course, usually announced during the previous week.

Quizzes will always be posted on Gauchospace: they will usually be 10-15 minutes long and will cover the material that you were supposed to read and work with up to (but not including) that week. They are intended for you to check how well you are following the explanations in zyBooks, and some questions will be similar to the PAs, CAs, and LAs in the book. Quizzes are supposed to be done individually and are meant to ensure that you are keeping up with the reading and are able to use course concepts.

Quizzes will vary in style: they will always start on Gauchospace but sometimes, a quiz will redirect you to Gradescope, after randomly assigning you a quiz version.

A quiz on Gauchospace is going to consist of randomly selected multiple-choice and short-answer questions, which will check your understanding of the reading, similar to the PAs and CAs in the book.
A quiz on Gradescope is going to ask you to write code, similar to the CAs and LAs in the book.

✨ Pro Tip✨ : We recommend reading through the sections and completing PAs as you read. After you finish reading the chapter, come back to complete the CAs in each section.

After the quiz grades have been posted, you will be able to review them with the ULAs and TAs: if you got something wrong on the quiz, make sure that you understand what the correct answer is supposed to be and why.

Attendance

Getting Help

Please, avoid emailing us directly unless it is something of a private nature. Also, direct emails without “CSW 8” or “CS 8” in the subject, might not be seen nor answered.

To make sure that you can always get your course-related questions answered, we suggest:

Use the classtime and lab sessions to ask questions. We do not bite (promise!!) :)
Use the online Q&A forum for the course, that is, Piazza: post your questions there (you can do so anonymously) and your classmates can help answer it; otherwise, we (the prof., TAs, ULAs) will try to respond within a day.
- By the way, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that last-minute posts before a deadline would receive a timely response (also we have to go to bed at some point!!!), so please start early and plan your work accordingly.
Come to our OFFICE HOURS! They’re posted on Gauchospace (and in our Syllabus)!
- Prof. Matni can also meet with you outside his office hours if you need it.

How do I send a direct message to TAs or professor?

Please contact us via Piazza - you can do so anonymously too. You can target a message directly to the prof. or to the prof.+TAs. Read the pinned post there titled Posting Guidelines, which describes how to submit a direct message to the Instructors.

“Help! I’m lost!” - How to ask for help when you don’t know what to ask

Sometimes, it can be difficult to formulate a question if you are not sure of what’s confusing you.

In cases when you are not sure what to ask, go ahead and ask “Can you please show another example of X?”, where X is something that you are not fully understanding or would like to see explained again. For example, you might ask something like “Can you please show an example of how to use a for loop with a range?” Prof. Matni LOVES to give examples and WANTS the students to understand these sometimes tricky concepts. However, he is unable to read minds (yet!)

The idea here is that by working through an example, you might be able to catch what’s confusing you and ask a follow-up or a clarifying question. Hopefully, the example itself will be sufficient to help you feel more comfortable with this concept. After seeing the example, try to vary the condition to see how well you are able to follow the explanation. For instance, after seeing an example for your initial question, modify the result to check if you can now write a for loop using the range to generate a sequence of odd numbers, of even numbers, of even numbers that start at 10, etc.

See additional notes in the “How to Succeed in CSW 8” resource on how to get/ask for help.

Communication

See the guidelines above - How do I send a direct message to TAs or professor?

We will use Piazza as the main communication mechanism in this course - like if Prof. Matni needs to make an announcement to the entire class, etc…

This FAQ page should be your first place to check if you have a question. If you don’t find the answer, then search through the posts on the Piazza forum to see if your question has been answered there.

It is your responsibility to make sure that you check and keep up with the information that we post. We hope that you will also participate in the exchanges on the Piazza forum and help us create a supportive and collaborative environment where everyone is comfortable asking questions and experimenting with the powerful programming concepts that we will be using in this class!

If you ever need to send the professor a direct email, make sure to include “CSW8” or “CS8” in the subject, and if there is a follow-up, keep it in the same email thread (i.e., use “Reply” instead of starting a separate email). Due to a large volume of emails, if you do not follow these guidelines, your email might not be even seen.

I have a question that has not been addressed here. What should I do?

Use any of the mechanisms described above in the Getting Help section to submit your query.