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Organizing a course

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• Organizing the Course (not so important in CS170 because curriculum is fixed)

  Decide what to cover (goal) in the course Organize the topics into meaningful sequence Pre-requisites !!! A text book may help, but may also hurt ! (bad text book !!!) Make the course structure explicit to students throught the course The structure shows the purpose of the course Reminding students of the course structure give them direction/purpose Write out the course structure in a syllabus E.g.: click here

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• Managing a course
  • Establish reasonable rules - enforce them (rules are no good if you don't enforce them)

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  • Specify rules on:

    how a grade us determined how to hanlde late home works

    Make sure you specify these rules before the grades/works are given.

    Example: my CS255 landing page

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  • Note:

    Changing the rules in the middle of the course will surely make students angry (How do you like to play a casino game when the house change the rules in the middle of the deal ???)

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• Assignments

  • Assignments in intro CS courses:

    Do not make one huge project due after 3 weeks. Give many small projects due in a week or so.

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  • Avoid giving extra assignments

    you need to give the assignment to everyone to be fair; it will only result in grade inflation for everyone. Better: curve