CSCI 0111 Course Syllabus

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Develop programs that process and manipulate data in the shape of tables and lists (with an introduction to tree-shaped data)
• Decide how to organize data for efficient and maintainable processing by programs
• Describe the social implications of large-scale data collection, retention, and usage
• Decompose programming tasks into solvable subtasks, informing the structure of your programs
• Develop good automatable tests for programs that give confidence in their correctness
• Work with others to develop, test, and analyze programs- Develop medium-sized programs with multiple interacting components

CS0111 can be taken either as a terminal course or as a lead-in to Computer Science or the Data Fluency certificate. Three paths from CS0111 are currently available:

• Students who do well in CSCI 0111 have the option of doing some extra work during 0111 to prepare for CSCI 0180 (spring and summer), which is the second half of one of the two CS year-long intro sequences.
• Students interested in data science can proceed to DATA 0200 (fall and maybe summer); the 111-200 sequence leads into the Data Fluency certificate.
• CSCI 0112, a direct followup to CSCI 0111, is designed to prepare students for several upper-level computer science courses in addition to CSCI 0180. It will likely be offered next fall.

Sometimes, the little things add up to creating an unwelcoming culture to some students. For example, you and a friend may think you are sharing in a private joke about other races, genders, cultures, etc, but if you do this in a public space and a classmate overhears it, it can have adverse effects. There is a fair bit of research on something called “stereotype threat”, in which simply reminding someone that they belong to an particular culture or identity (on whatever dimension) can interfere with their class performance.

Stereotype threat works both ways: you can assume that a student will struggle based on who they appear to be, or you can assume that a student is doing great based on who they appear to be. Both are potentially harmful.

Bear in mind that diversity has many facets, some of which are not visible. Your classmates may have medical conditions (physical or mental), personal situations (financial, family, etc), or interests that aren’t common to most students in the course. One key aspect of professionalism is avoiding comments that (likely unintentionally) put down colleagues for situations they cannot control. Bragging in open space that an assignment is easy or “crazy”, for example, can send subtle cues that discourage classmates who are dealing with issues that you can’t see (or are simply new to computing). Please take care, so we can create a class in which all students feel supported and respected.

Beyond the slips that many of us make unintentionally are a host of explicit behaviors that the course staff, department, and university (and beyond) do not tolerate. These are generally classified under the term harassment, with sexual-based harassment a specific form that is governed by federal laws known as Title IX.

Brown’s Title IX Web site provides many resources for understanding the terms, procedures, and policies around harassment. Make sure you are aware enough of these issues to avoid crossing a line in your interactions with other students (for example, repeatedly asking another student out on a date after they have said no can cross this line).

Your reaction to this topic might be to laugh it off, or to make (or think) snide remarks about “political correctness” or jokes about consent or other things. You might think people just need to grow a thicker skin or learn to take a joke. This isn’t your decision to make. Research shows the consequences (emotional as well as physical) on people who experience harassment. When your behavior forces another student to focus on something other than their education, you have crossed a line. You have no right to take someone else’s education away from them.

In light of recent reports about such issues on campus, Brown is taking additional steps to reduce this form of harm. Therefore, if we cannot appeal to your decency and collegiality, let us at least appeal to your self-interest. Do not mess around on this matter. It will not go well for you.

Professionalism and respect for diversity are not just matters between students; they also apply to how the course staff treat the students. The staff of this course will treat you in a way that respects our differences. However, despite our best efforts, we might slip up, hopefully inadvertently. If you are concerned about classroom environment issues created by the staff or overall class dynamic, please feel free to talk to us about it. The instructors and the HTAs in particular welcome any comments or concerns regarding conduct of the course and the staff.

Sometimes, you may not be comfortable bringing this up directly to us. If so, you are welcome to talk to Laura Dobler (the CS dept diversity coordinator) or to the Department Chair, Ugur Cetintemel. You may also reach out to Rene Davis in the Title IX office.

As a department, we will take all complaints about unprofessional or discriminatory behavior seriously.

Our time in the classroom will be a mix of traditional lecture and discussion-based activities. Please come to class ready to engage with the material and ask questions about things you don’t understand. The pre-class drills (discussed below) should help you with this!

CSCI 0111 will support both synchronous and asynchronous participation. Lectures include hands-on exercises. Students attending lectures synchronously will work on these exercises in small groups, simulating working with nearby students in a classroom. In synchronous labs, students will work on practice problems with classmates and a TA in the (virtual) room. Synchronous groupings will settle into having the same people, to foster community among students. Students attending asynchronously will have lecture capture and staff help to form alternative study groups. All students will have access to faculty and TAs through an online discussion board, as well as one-on-one appointment-based slots.

In addition to 3 hours a week in lecture and 2 hours a week in lab, students will be expected to spend 6-8 hours a week outside of class on homework, projects, and drills, plus an average of 2 hours per week studying for the quizzes and the final exam.

There is no textbook for the course; all readings will be provided digitally.

Students should have access to a computer to complete the assignments. We will be using several software tools, including Zoom, Google Docs, Google Jamboard, and Prismia during class. The software web page has information on the programming tools you will use.

Our course uses Campuswire for online discussions. You can use it to ask questions about course concepts, assignments, and logistics. Posts can be either public or private; public posts are visible to everyone, while private posts are visible only to course staff. Any questions having to do with your particular solution to an assignment should be private; all other posts should be public (if you have a question about something, it’s very likely that other students do, too!). The course staff reserves the right to make private posts public if the answer is of general interest.

Campuswire is a discussion forum, so please feel free to respond to questions and comments–it’s great when students can learn from each other! When doing so, keep in mind the Course culture guidelines.

Please post questions about the course to Campuswire rather than emailing the course staff–it’s very useful to have all course questions in one place where any of us can answer them. Please don’t email individual TAs unless referring to a prior interaction with that TA.

If you have concerns of a personal nature (a problem with a project partner, for instance), please email one or both of the instructors.

The TAs hold office hours every week via a combination of Campuswire and Zoom. Kathi and Doug also hold regular office hours, and are available by appointment. Each week’s office hours schedule is available on the course website.

Please come to office hours! Coming to office hours does not send a signal that you are behind or need “extra help”; on the contrary, the most successful students are usually those who come to office hours early and often.

Feel free to come to the instructors’ office hours even if you don’t have a specific question about an assignment; the instructors are happy to chat about the course material, computer science in general, careers in computer science, etc.

Drills are short online quizzes that will be due shortly before class every Monday and Friday. These should take around 30 minutes to complete, and are designed to help us–and you!–understand which subjects you’ve internalized and which subjects we might need to spend more time on.

Approximately once a week, there will be an extended lecture activity with an associated hand-in, to be completed with the study groups discussed above. Students attending lecture synchronously should complete these activities in lecture. Asynchronous study groups should meet virtually to complete these activities. We understand that students will sometimes have to miss lecture or be unable to meet with their group, so it’s fine if students occasionally need to complete and hand in these activities individually; most of them, however, should be done in groups, and students may not get credit for repeated individual handins. If you’re having trouble meeting with your study group, please reach out to us!

Drills and lecture activities will be graded for completion only as long as you appear to be taking them seriously, and full credit will be given if you complete 70% of them.

You will have a two-hour lab session every week. Labs are hands-on programming projects where you’ll practice writing code and integrating concepts learned in class in order to solve new problems. You’ll write programs in small groups guided by our course TAs. Labs are graded based on attendance, and you can miss two labs during the semester without penalty. Students who have confirmed conflicts for all available lab sections can make arrangements to complete labs independently and discuss them with the TAs in office hours.

Homeworks, due approximately once per week, are designed to help you understand the course material and put it into practice. They will consist of both written questions and short programming assignments, which you will work on individually. Programming assignments will be graded for correctness as well as code style and test quality. Some of your homeworks will include short, written reflections on readings related to the impact of data collection on society. These will be graded lightly–we’re asking you to think seriously and carefully about thee issues, but not to write full formal papers.

There will be three larger programming-focused projects, which are designed to help you apply your programming knowledge to interesting problems and to learn how to work with a team. For each project, you will work in groups of 4 or 5 to design a solution to a data-focused problem. Before starting to implement your solution, you will have a “design check” with a TA in order to make sure you’ve thought through the problem and come up with a reasonable design. You’ll then implement the code for the project, either on your own or with other members of your project group. For each project you’ll hand in the code you wrote as well as a writeup describing your design and reflecting on the project. Students who worked together on the project implementation should hand in only one implementation. The course projects are independent of each other, and project groups must be different for each one (the course staff is happy to help with forming project groups). You will have two weeks to complete each project: one week for the design and another week for the implementation.

On two homework or projects during the semester, we will ask you to schedule a short meeting with a TA to discuss your code. The goal is to ensure that you have a solid understanding of the work you’ve handed in. TAs might ask you to talk through some potential extensions to your code, or to explain some functionality. We will ask you to schedule a check-in appointment after grading the homework or project in question. Students should try to be flexible in scheduling these meetings.

Code check-ins will be graded on a course-grained basis. Students who demonstrate good understanding will receive full credit.

There will be two graded online exams–a midterm and a final. These tests are designed to assess your mastery of the course material. They will have a mix of multiple-choice, short-answer, and (very!) short programming problems (for which you won’t be expected to remember the details of programming language syntax). The exams will be weighted such that you can do poorly on one and still end up with a good overall grade for this component of the class.

The date of the midterm will be announced at least a week in advance. The final will take place during the time listed on https://cab.brown.edu.

Each student will have five “late days” that can be used throughout the semester on homeworks and projects. Each late day allows the student to hand in a homework one day late. No more than three can be used on an individual assignment. Late projects count against each partner’s late days. Late days cannot be used on project design checks; missing a design check without a documented emergency will result in a 30% penalty on that project’s grade.

If your assignment is handed in late, you (or your project partner) are out of late days, and you have not been granted an extension (see below), your assignment will not be graded.

Please contact the instructors directly regarding extensions. Requests for routine issues such as work in other courses or interviews should normally come out of your allotment of 5 late days. Extensions for more substantial illnesses and personal issues will be granted on a case-by-case basis. We will generally require a note from the Deans to grant an extension for a non-medical reason. If you think you need an extension on an assignment, please reach out to us as early as possible. Only in the most extreme circumstances will an extension or time change be granted on an exam.

To avoid conflicts of interest in grading, TAs may not grade students with whom they have current or past close personal or professional relationships. Either students or TAs may declare grading conflicts. If there are a particular TAs who you feel should not be grading your work, please contact the HTAs or the instructors so we can configure grading assignments accordingly.

We use anonymous grading for as many assignments as possible (roughly, everything except the course projects). For assignments graded anonymously, blocklists apply–TAs will not know whose work they are grading.

You are encouraged to look over your assignments after they have been graded. If you find a possible error or believe that you lost too many points, please submit a regrade request through the course hand-in software. You should initiate such inquiries within one week of receiving your grade. The grading will be freshest in your TA’s mind during this time, and this prevents a backlog of requests from arising towards the end of the semester.

If you discover that you cannot make your lab section during a particular week, you can email the TAs to temporarily switch into another lab section. You should send this email at least 24 hours in advance of your scheduled lab. That way, the TAs will have sufficient time to read your email, help you find an open slot in another lab, and confirm the change. If you email the TAs with less notice, say only 2 hours in advance of your scheduled lab, and no TA is able to help you before your usual lab time, you are expected to go to your assigned lab.

If you require accommodation for religious observance, please contact the instructors at least a week before the deadline in question to make arrangements.

In the event of a medical or family emergency, contact the instructors to work out accommodations.