Our lectures are scheduled for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 1:30PM - 2:30 PM, Pacific time, in Hewlett 200 – the largest room available on campus. Lecture participation is a component of your grade this quarter. All lectures will be video recorded for asynchronous viewing and on-demand re-watching. It might take up to 2-3 hours after the end of class for the videos to post to Canvas, where they will appear under Panopto Course Videos.
Common questions about lecture are included below.
Is lecture attendance required?
It's important to keep pace with the lectures rather than to batch them up and watch them all in one go. (That model works great for Netflix shows that really hook you in, but it's not great for learning.) Class is also just way more fun for everyone involved when we have robust lecture attendance. We strongly encourage everyone to join us in person!
To give you an incentive to stay on top of lectures, we've reserved 5% of your grade for lecture participation. Here are the details: starting on Monday, April 7th, we'll have at least one quick check-in through PollEV in each lecture. In cases where these check-ins ask about lecture topics, you will earn participation credit if you meaningfully attempt to answer those questions, regardless of whether your answers are correct.
Anyone participating via PollEV is expected to be present in lecture in person. If you would prefer not to attend lecture in person, we will send out a form in Week 4 that will give you the option to instead count your final exam score in place of your lecture participation grade.
To allow for some flexibility, you're allowed to miss the credit opportunity (i.e. not completing PollEV) for three lectures over the course of the quarter and still earn the full 5%.
If you are a CGOE student, then we will drop the participation portion of your grade when computing raw scores, renormalizing the remaining 95% of your grade back up to 100%. However, when calculating final letter grades, we will ensure this does not place you at a disadvantage compared to those who were able to earn participation credit through PollEV.
How do lecture quizzes work?
Here are the details:
- We will release a quiz on Canvas after each lecture.
- Quizzes will be due in weekly batches, usually on Wednesdays, 30 minutes prior to the start of lecture. The deadline for each quiz will be visible in Canvas.
- Since quizzes are released after each lecture but due in weekly batches, you will necessarily have more time to work on some quizzes than others. We understand this might seem wonky at first, but our hope is that the weekly deadline will feel more manageable than having a quiz due before each lecture. The batch deadlines should also afford you a reasonable degree of flexibility if you miss a class and have to fall back on the lecture video.
- At the end of the quarter, we will add a small bonus to your course grade based on the number of quizzes you completed and your scores on those quizzes. Hooray! Who doesn't love a direct boost to their grade for something that also solidifies their understanding of the material and helps them progress through the course at a consistent, manageable pace?
- Because quizzes are graded for bonus points only, we do not anticipate granting extensions on them under any circumstances. We ask that you pay careful attention to their deadlines in Canvas.
Our goals with these lecture quizzes are:
- to give you a small grade incentive to help you motivate yourself to stay on top of lectures, which in turn should make this fast-paced course more manageable
- to help ensure everyone is caught up on relevant material before heading into section each week, which will enable more productive and meaningful group discussions
- to provide you with a timely, regular, low-stakes assessments of your understanding of the course material, so that you can identify any misunderstandings early and head to office hours straight away if you need clarification on anything
Are lectures recorded?
The spring quarter offering of CS106B will be recorded for our CGOE remote participants. Those video recordings are also available to regular on-campus for review or missed class. It sometimes takes about 2-3 hours after the end of class for the videos to post to Canvas, where they will appear under Panopto Course Videos. We cannot guarantee that live synchronous remote viewing will be available for all lectures.