🌷 End of week 4 updates (important peer review)

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Friday 06 October 2023, 02:10:59 PM.

Hi everyone!

Iteration 1 is due tonight. Congratulations to everyone for their amazing work. We've seen some tentative marks, and a lot of groups have done very well. For the groups that struggled a little more, keep your chin up and take on the lessons for the next iteration. The last two iterations of the course are three weeks instead of two. That breathing room will help.

Don't forget to catch up and ensure you're on top of the week 4 lectures by the end of the weekend.

We'll give you the quick last for the lower-attention-span people:

• Lab5 is due earlier than normal - Week 5 Saturday 10:00 pm.
• Tutorial 4 solutions and lab3 marks have been released
• Iteration 1 peer review is due 9 am Monday 9th Oct, and Iteration 2 is being released on Saturday night.

🐢General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Tutorial 4 solutions have been released
• Lab 4 is due on Monday week 5 at 5pm.
• Lab 5 is due Saturday week 5 at 10pm ! This has an earlier due date.. please keep an eye on it*. This is due to week 6 being a flexible week and we want to avoid having deadlines in week 6. We only have one lab in lab05.
• Lab 3 marks have been released on grades page . Remember to read the lab mark guide .

🍹PEER REVIEW ITER1 - you have only a few days to complete.

Everyone is required to complete their first peer review for iteration 1. This is invaluable feedback for your tutor to track how your group is performing together.

The peer review deadline is 5pm on 9am Monday 9th Oct. You have a few days to complete the survey. It should be quick.

FILL IT OUT NOW!!

🔥 Iteration 2 released on Saturday night

Keep an eye out for it and get started next week.

Remember that iteration 2 is where you will need topics from lectures:

• Static Verification
• Linting
• Advanced Functions
• HTTP Servers
• Persistence (next week) - but this is easy

The advice is to start iteration 2 early next week. The very beginning of it (particularly in adjusting to Typescript + Linting + HTTP) will feel like a hurdle. But just focus on getting over that hurdle so that you can get into the more interesting stuff.

✨Iteration 1 marks

Your iteration 1 marks will be released next Friday!

A reminder that this weekend (Sunday) is the last day you can drop the course and make it as if your enrollment never happened. If you do drop the course, just shoot your tutor or team members a quick email letting them know (1 minute of your time saves everyone a bit of pain). Since you've dropped right after an iteration, everyone will be fine, and tutors will figure things out :)

Other than that please have an amazing weekend and look after yourselves! Stay steady; we still have a bit of term to go.

✈️ End of week 3 updates + lab03 extension

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Sunday 01 October 2023, 10:16:17 PM, last modified Sunday 01 October 2023, 10:16:59 PM.

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the end of week 3. Nearly a third of the way through the course. Keep it up!!

Please don't forget to stay up to date with the lectures. Before our next Tuesday lecture, you should have watched all of week 1, 2, and 3 lectures. A reminder that last term, we found that the majority of students who struggled with the course had also fallen behind on lectures :(

🐢General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Tutorial 3 solutions have been released.
• [Extension] Lab 3 is due on Week 4 Tuesday at 8:00 am (i.e. early morning of 03.10.2023). Solutions will be released on the solution branch at that time.
  • Due to the public holiday on Monday 2nd of October 2023, the lab deadline has been extended by 15 hours.

😻 Lab02 Marks

Your lab02 has been marked, and your marks can be seen on the grades page .

You can read our detailed info about looking at your lab marks here - this is a very useful guide !! If you have any issues, you can follow up with your lab assistant during your lab time during week 4.

🍉 Iteration 0 results

Your iteration 0 marks and comments will be made available to you on the grades page of Webcms3 tonight. If you have any follow-up questions about your grades, please email your tutor directly.

🦃 Iteration 1 - Leaderboard & 1 week to go

Iteration 1 is due on the Friday of week 4. If you haven't yet started, get to it!

We will be running the leaderboard (as per section 8.2 in the spec) to have your tentative marks available on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of week 4. The leaderboard will be updated around lunchtime - assume at 12 p.m. The leaderboard gives you a chance to sanity check your automark (without knowing the details of what you did right and wrong), and is just a bit of fun.

You will be able to access the leaderboard here on Monday .

🌈 Next week

In week 4, the content we learn will talk about linting, advanced Javascript function features and web servers.

Hope everyone is have a good long weekend! See you next Tuesday :)

🦓 End of week 2 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Friday 22 September 2023, 11:13:36 PM, last modified Friday 22 September 2023, 11:25:09 PM.

Hi everyone!

We hope you've had a great end to your second week! Lots of positive stories are coming my way from tutors who are enjoying the groups in their classes.

Congrats on submitting iteration 0, and you can take a little bit of a breath this weekend before things start to progressively pick up next week.

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Please don't forget to watch the lectures. Some students start to fall behind. Students who fall behind in lectures tend to, on average, get lower marks in the course. Ensure you've watched all week 1 & 2 lectures by Sunday night.
• I have released the code that we used in lectures here . You can find the code for weeks 1-3 in that repo. The code will be updated after the lectures, and I will share the code for future weeks later.
• I re-uploaded all lecture slides for week 1&2. The slides are now more user-friendly and more suitable for printing. Thank you to those who provided feedback on the slides.
• Tutorial 2 solutions have been released.
• Lab 2 is due on Monday at 5 pm.
• We have many help sessions. Sometimes, the queue was quite empty this week. So feel free to join to get free 1-1 help! :) You can check the help session schedule here .

🌳 Lab01

Your lab01 has been marked, and your "theoretical" marks are on the grades page . Remember, these marks don't count for anything! It was just a trial run.

You can read our detailed info about looking at your lab marks here - this is a very useful guide !!

🦃 Iteration 1

Iteration 1 will be released this Saturday evening at 10 p.m. Keep an eye out for merge requests in your project repo. An introductory video is contained in the spec. However, the video was recorded for 23T2, and the spec has minor changes for 23T3. Please read through the spec for 23T3 and consult the spec for changes.

Iteration 1 is due on the Friday of week 4, so you have around two weeks to complete it.

From iteration 1, we expect to see engagement with standups, meetings, task boards, etc from everyone between now and iteration 1 is due. We will talk more about engagement in Tuesday's lecture next week.

Please regularly check for merge requests and spec updates on your projects! Every day or two, check out the git commit history or any course-pushed pending merge requests.

⏰ Next week

In week 3, we will learn about continuous integration (an exciting and critical part of software engineering) as well as touch on a lot more static verification. These are exciting topics.

See you next Tuesday, and enjoy your weekend. :)

🐕 End of week 1 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Sunday 17 September 2023, 07:18:45 AM, last modified Sunday 17 September 2023, 07:20:33 AM.

Hi everyone!

It was great meeting you online and in person! Now that we're wrapping up week 1, it's a great time to summarise the key things that happened this week and give you some pointers for week 2.

Week 1 recap

The key things that happened in week 1 are:

• Week 1 lecture slides and recordings can be found on this page .
• Week 1 tutorial and lab content links can be found on this page .
  • Week 1 tutorial solutions were released yesterday (always released on Friday). They are on the solutions branch in the tutorial's repo.
  • Week 1 lab solutions will be released shortly after the deadline next week (check out the "solutions" branch on the repos)
  • Week 1 lab marks will be released next Friday (Friday of week 2)
    • Next Friday, to see more about the marks you got in the lab and other information, check out the bottom of the Labs page under "Lab marks".
• Your project groups were formed during class, and the project specification will be released on week 2 Monday morning.
  • You should email your tutor if you're unsure what group you're in.
• If you're still a bit unsure about any of the software or tools to set up for the course, check out the getting started guide .
  • We know that you might use SSH-FS for COMP1531. However, there are known issues with using SSH-FS in more advanced projects, as in comp1531. Please either use VLAB or use a local setup.

Project groups

During your week 1 class, your tutor finalised your project groups in your lab time.

A reminder that whilst you aren't required to communicate via the Microsoft Teams channel, it's important to note that if teamwork disputes arise or you make claims about other team member's contributions later in the course - the only places we will look to for evidence of how you interact with your group are:

1. The project check-ins and iteration demonstrations
2. Gitlab contributions (code you push)
3. Peer reviews at the end of the iteration
4. Any UNSW emails sent between group members
5. Conversations that occur on Microsoft teams

If we need to analyse group communication, we won't be able to look at things like Facebook, Discord, Slack, etc., as these are out of our control and are open to tampering etc that makes it unfair to consider reasonable evidence. However, anything in your Microsoft Teams chats we'll happily take into account. If you're uncertain about anything here or aren't agreeing with your group on how to communicate, talk to your tutor in week 2; they will help you figure it all out! :)

If you don't have your group sorted, please email your tutor ASAP.

Project release

As of Monday morning of week 2, a group project repository will be created for each group. The repository is called " project-backend ". You can find your group repository (if you haven't already) on the homepage of nw-syd-gitlab.cseunsw.tech. If you can't find your repository, please post on the forum. If you can find the repo, but you're in the wrong group, please email your tutor ASAP.

The project's first stage is iteration 0, and due next Friday night - week 2. It's a very easy stage. You will have five days to complete it - but that is OK! It should only take a couple of hours!

Next Monday, the most important thing to do is to start messaging or emailing your group members and reading through the project specifications. You can sync up about it and start some early planning, and I would strongly encourage you to organise times to meet next week. From week 3 onwards, we will expect groups to follow a more rigid meeting as we move onto the project's next stage.

Over the coming days, there may continue to be slight changes to your group, primarily due to students potentially dropping the course before the census date. Your tutors will always support you and find solutions that will make things OK :)

Things to keep an eye on for Week 2

• Your week 1 lab is due 5pm on Monday. Remember that lab01 does not count for any marks.
• Your week 2 tutorial + lab is critical for you to spend time with your group and tutor to get stuck into the project.
• Help Sessions !
• Sometimes we push updates to your repos (e.g. labs or projects) that may appear as merge requests in the left-hand sidebar. Keep an eye out for it. Your tutor(s) can always help out if you're confused.
• Lectures next week:
  • We will talk about project management and Mutli-file & Importing on Tuesday, Dynamic Verification and Working as a team on Friday. Looking forward to seeing you again.

Other than that, have a great weekend!

🌷 End of week 4 updates (important peer review)

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 22 June 2023, 08:36:39 PM.

Hi everyone!

Iteration 1 is due tonight (basically now). Congratulations to everyone who pulled through on this one. There are some groups who were smooth sailing - congratulations to you. For the groups that struggled a little more, keep your chin up and take on the lessons for the next iteration. The last two iterations of the course are 3 weeks instead of two. That breathing room will help. Thank you for the hard work and we hope you can enjoy a bit of your weekend :)

Don't forget to catch up and make sure you're on top of the week 4 lectures by end of weekend.

We'll give you the quick last for the lower-attention-span people:

• Lab5 is due earlier than normal - Saturday of week 5
• Tutorial 4 solutions and lab3 marks have been released
• Iteration 1 peer review is due on Monday (marks out next Fri), and Iteration 2 is being released on Sunday.
• A bonus iteration 2 webinar with Q&A is being run on Monday night online on top of normal lectures.

🐢General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Tutorial 4 solutions have been released
• Lab 4 is due on Monday week 5 at 5pm.
• Lab 5 is due Saturday week 5 at 10pm ! This has an earlier due date.. please keep an eye on it*.
• Lab 3 marks have been released on grades page . Remember to read the lab mark guide .

🍹PEER REVIEW ITER1 - you have only a few days to complete.

Everyone is required to complete their first peer review for iteration 1. This is invaluable feedback for your tutor to track how your group is performing together.

We have extended the peer review deadline is 5pm on Monday the 10th of October (week 5). You have a few days to complete the survey. It should be quick.

FILL IT OUT NOW!!

🔥 Iteration 2 released on Sunday at 5pm

Iteration 2 will be released by Sunday at 5pm . Keep an eye out for it and get started next week.

Remember that iteration 2 is where you will need topics from lectures:

• Static Verification
• Linting
• Advanced Functions
• HTTP Servers
• Persistence (next week) - but this is easy

Advice is to start iteration 2 early next week. The very beginning of it (particularly in adjusting to Typescript + Linting + HTTP) will feel like a hurdle. But just focus on getting over that hurdle so that you can get into the more interesting stuff.

👀 Iteration 2 Webinar on Monday at 6pm

✨Iteration 1 marks

Your iteration 1 marks will be released next Friday!

A reminder that this weekend (Sunday) is the last day you can drop the course and make it as if your enrollment never happened. If you do drop the course just shoot your tutor or team members a quick email letting them know (1 minute of your time saves everyone a bit of pain). Since you've dropped right after an iteration everyone will be fine and tutors figure things out :)

Other than that please have an amazing weekend and look after yourselves! Stay steady, we still have a bit of term to go.

✈️ End of week 3 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Saturday 17 June 2023, 02:30:04 AM, last modified Saturday 17 June 2023, 02:38:15 AM.

Hi everyone!

Congrats on the end of week 3. Nearly a third of the way through the course. Keep it up!! It's been so fun for us to hang out with you and learn together this term :)

🐢General Updates and reminders

• Tutorial 3 solutions have been released.
• Iteration 1 is due in 7 days (Friday of week 4). If you haven't yet started, get to it!
• If you're running things locally, don't forget to make sure you're using the right version of NodeJS. We run version 18.16.0. If you need help getting the right version locally follow this guide .
• If you want to find the code you submitted for iteration 0, check out a "it-0-submission" branch we've pushed to your repo to help you out.

🍜 ⚠️ Lecture adjustments for week 4

For week 4 only we will have two lectures:

• Wednesday 10am-12pm in-person (as usual)
• Wednesday 6pm-7pm online (a replacement of the Monday lecture).
• If you can't attend this, that is OK, just watch the recording

So basically the Monday lecture is being moved. We are doing this because with less lecture time needed this week we don't need to burden you with two full lecture blocks.

This is reflected on the lecture timetable page .

😻 Lab02 Marks

Your lab02 has been marked, and your marks can be seen on sturec .

Your mark has been awarded between 0 and 1. If your mark appears as "-0.1", it is because there was an error whilst marking (this could be our problem or your problem). This is just a place holder mark. You have not gotten negative marks. It's kind of like a "null" We're still double checking a number of these "-0.1" cases so if you got this please check again on Sunday morning as it may be fixed.

You can read our detailed info about looking at your lab marks here - this is a very useful guide !! If you have any issues you can follow up with your lab assist in your lab time during week 4.

🍉 Iteration 0 results

Your iteration 0 marks and comments have been made available to you on sturec . If you have any follow up questions about your grades after this time, please email your tutor directly.

🦃 Iteration 1 - Leaderboard

We will be running the leaderboard (described in the spec) to have your tentative marks available on Monday , Wednesday , and Friday of week 4. The leaderboard will be updated around lunchtime - assume at 12pm. We will not be running the leaderboard more often and won't be doing individual re-runs for students. This is a new initiative of the last 12 months that is aimed to give you more support by giving you an indicative of your progress without telling you exactly what is wrong (which would undermine the nature of the assessment).

You will be able to access the leaderboard here on Monday (before then it might have a 404 error).

🌈 Next week

In terms of lecture content next week:

• In week 4 the content we learn will focus mainly on web servers, with a bit of advanced Javascript function features. All of next week's content isn't relevant until week 5 (for both labs and for next project iteration). However, they are REALLY relevant for week 5.
• So if you're feeling under the pump with iteration 1 just catch up on the recordings next weekend before week 5.

See you Wednesday!! :)

🦓 End of week 2 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Saturday 10 June 2023, 12:27:37 PM, last modified Saturday 10 June 2023, 02:27:50 PM.

Hi everyone!

We hope you've had a great end to your second week! Lots of positive stories are coming my way from tutors who are enjoying the groups in their classes. Congrats on submitting iteration 0, and you can take a little bit of a breather this weekend before things start to progressively pick up next week. We know it may feel like a lot sometimes, but we'll get through it. Our teaching team is excited to support you!

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Week 3 Monday's lecture will be online ONLY because of the public holiday (same time) . This is the link to the online stream .
• Please don't forget to watch the lectures. Some students start to fall behind. Students who fall behind in lectures tend to, on average, get lower marks in the course. Ensure that by Sunday night, you've watched all of week 1 & 2 lectures .
• Tutorial 2 solutions have been released.
• Lab 2 is due on Monday at 5 pm.
• Please regularly check for merge requests and spec updates on your labs and project! Every day or two, check out the git commit history or any course-pushed pending merge requests.

🍜 Lecture adjustments

• Because of the public holiday, the week 3 Monday lecture will be ONLINE ONLY at the same time as usual.
• This is reflected on the lecture timetable page .
• This is the link to the online stream .

🦃 Iteration 1

Iteration 1 will be released on Sunday at 5pm. Keep an eye out for merge requests in your project repo. An introductory video is contained in the spec. Take your time reading the spec and watching the video, as it will all be very helpful in getting started.

Iteration 1 is due on Friday, 23rd June ( week 4 ), so you have around 2 weeks to complete it.

Now that you've seen the week 2 lectures, we expect to see engagement with standups, meetings, task boards, etc from everyone between now and iteration 1 is due.

🌳 Lab01

Your lab01 has been marked, and instructions on viewing your "theoretical" marks can be found here . Remember, these marks don't count for anything! It was just a trial run.

You can read our detailed info about looking at your lab marks here - this is a very useful guide !!

⏰ Next week

In week 3, we will learn about continuous integration (an exciting and critical part of software engineering) and touch on a lot more static verification. These are exciting topics.

Next Monday's lecture is online due to the public holiday. Enjoy your weekend :)

🐕 End of week 1 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Saturday 03 June 2023, 02:51:24 PM, last modified Saturday 03 June 2023, 03:13:42 PM.

Hi everyone!

Now that we're wrapping up week 1, it's a great time to summarise the key things that happened this week and give you some pointers for week 2.

Week 1 recap

The key things that happened in week 1 are:

• Week 1 lecture slides and recordings can be found on this page .
  • We had some internet issues during the Wednesday lecture and the recording was unfortunately cut short with some information missing out. We used a great video recording from 22T3 lectured by Hayden to ensure your learning is not influenced. We are currently working with the UNSW AV Technologies team to ensure your learning experience in future weeks.
• Week 1 tutorial and lab content links can be found on this page .
  • Week 1 tutorial solutions were released yesterday (always released on Friday). They are on the solutions branch in the tutorial's repo.
  • Week 1 lab solutions will be released shortly after the deadline next week (check out the "solutions" branch on the repos)
  • Week 1 lab marks will be released next Friday (Friday of week 2)
    • Next Friday, to see more about the marks you got in the lab and other information, check out the bottom of the Labs page under "Lab marks"
• Your project groups were formed during class and the project specification will be released on week 2 Monday morning.
  • You should email your tutor if you're unsure what group you're in.
• If you're still a bit unsure about any of the software or tools to set up for the course, check out the getting started guide .

Project groups

During your week 1 class, your tutor finalised your project groups in your lab time.

A reminder that whilst you aren't required to communicate via the Microsoft Teams channel, it's important to note that if teamwork disputes arise or you make claims about other team member's contributions later in the course - the only places we will look to for evidence of how you interact with your group are:

1. The project check-ins and iteration demonstrations
2. Gitlab contributions (code you push)
3. Peer reviews at the end of the iteration
4. Any UNSW emails sent between group members
5. Conversations that occur on Microsoft teams

If we need to analyse group communication, we won't be able to look at things like Facebook, Discord, Slack, etc., as these are out of our control and are open to tampering etc that makes it unfair to consider reasonable evidence. However, anything in your Microsoft Teams chats we'll happily take into account. If you're uncertain about anything here or aren't agreeing with your group on how to communicate, talk to your tutor in week 2; they will help you figure it all out! :)

If you don't have your group sorted, please email your tutor ASAP.

Project release

As of Monday morning of week 2, a group project repository was created for each group. The repository is called " project-backend ". You can find your group repository (if you haven't already) on the homepage of nw-syd-gitlab.cseunsw.tech. If you can't find your repository, please post on the forum. If you can find the repo, but you're in the wrong group, please email your tutor ASAP.

The project's first stage is iteration 0, and due next Friday night - week 2. It's a very easy stage. You will have 4 days to complete it - but that is OK! It should only take a couple of hours!

Please watch the introductory video from the project .

Next Monday, the most important thing to do is to start messaging or emailing your group members and reading through the project specification. You can sync up about it and start some early planning, and I would strongly encourage you to organise times to meet next week. From week 3 onwards, we will expect groups to follow a more rigid meeting as we move onto the project's next stage.

Over the coming days, there may continue to be slight changes to your group, primarily due to students potentially dropping the course before the census date. Your tutors will always support you and find solutions that will make things OK :)

Things to keep an eye on for Week 2

• Your week 1 lab is due 5pm on Monday. Remember that lab01 does not count for any marks.
• Your week 2 tutorial + lab is critical for you to spend time with your group and tutor to get stuck into the project.
• Help Sessions !
• Sometimes we push updates to your repos (e.g. labs or projects) that may appear as merge requests in the left-hand sidebar. Keep an eye out for it. Your tutor(s) can always help out if you're confused.
• Lectures next week:
  • Hayden will be lecturing on Weeks 2-4. I will be in Spain for an academic conference, presenting my research on how to support better education and learn from other education experts. I will still be available online if you need any help! Feel free to reach out! :)

Other than that, have a great weekend!

😍 Welcome to COMP1531 23T2 🎉🎉

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Sunday 28 May 2023, 11:40:00 AM, last modified Sunday 28 May 2023, 11:40:22 AM.

Hi everyone! Welcome to COMP1531 23T2 :)

The fundamental aim of COMP1531 is to help you on your transition from being a solo programmer into being a collaborative software engineer . We have a teaching staff team of more than 30. Feel free to i ntroduce yourself in the forum and we're all super excited to get to know you!

About the course

Getting ready for week 1!

Lectures

• Week 1 lab questions aren't worth marks - we mark them for practice but don't actually count your marks.
• Week 1 lab is due on MONDAY of week 2. So for late enrolments, you have this weekend to sort that out.
• Your tutorial and lab material for week 1 can be found here ! The tutorial links will work, but the lab links might not work for you yet.
• Your tutor will finalise your group allocations for the major project during your class.

See you soon!

🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀

[Notice] Very important information before term

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 22 May 2023, 02:58:52 PM, last modified Monday 22 May 2023, 04:08:10 PM.

Hi everyone,

A very early welcome to COMP1531 for 23T2. This early welcome is predominately to give you time to complete the group preference form below.

A more detailed introduction with information and summaries will be sent out next week, but for now here are a few things to get you prepped for term.

1. 🐼 (Read below) Complete the group preference form for the major project* (DUE IN ~5 DAYS!!)
2. 😽 Go and read the course <u>outline.</u> You should also watch the welcome video .
3. 🙊 Join the forum and introduce yourself ! (You were invited on your email z5555555@unsw.edu.au)
4. 👨💻 Our first lecture will also be in-person during week 1! This is shown on the lecture timetable <u>page.</u>

❗️*(IMPORTANT) Group Preference for Major Project

As specified in the course <u>outline,</u> COMP1531 has a major project component that is a 5-person, 9-week group project that constitutes 60% of the course assessment. The successful and equitable formation of amazing groups of students for this major project is a priority for us. And we need to finalize these groups before week 1.

For us to form groups effectively, you are required to complete the preference <u>form.</u>

This form asks you to:

• Optionally preference 1 other student to be in your group of 5.
  • If you preference someone, to avoid us disregarding the preference, they must:
    • (1) Be enrolled in the same class at the same time (i.e., same code on MyUNSW)
    • (2) Fill out the form preferencing you as well (we disregard preferences if it only goes one way)
• Answer a few further questions that help us form groups, regardless of whether you have a person-preference.

The form is due on Saturday 27th of May at 11pm!! That's a little over 5 days from now.

We sadly aren't in a position to accept late preferences, so please fill it in prior to then. Preferences are not guarantees that you will be in a group with that person, however, in nearly all cases we make it work.

If you don't have anyone to preference, or only have one preference, don't even worry! That's very normal. You might hear murmurs from other students that you could end up with a "horror group" for COMP1531. Believe it or not, typically about 50% of student's don't provide preferences, and we just randomly match students in the same class.

We can assure you that while groups that struggle do exist, they only make up a small number of groups. We have structured the course and assessment very intentionally to have processes in place to ensure that if you work hard and follow the rules, that your accomplishments should reflect your mark, even if you end up with some challenging group situations.

Lastly, a reminder that we can't manually enroll you in a class that is full, and we aren't accepting more than 1 preference per person as this ensures equitable group formation.

We'll reach out again next week with much more information about getting started and first classes!

🍉 Week 11 Update

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 24 November 2022, 07:08:59 PM, last modified Thursday 24 November 2022, 07:11:30 PM.

Updates below!

🤖 Final Exam Time

Based on the MyExperience score, and another 5 minutes I'll add on, we're going to have the final exam start at 2pm and finish at 5:29pm (an extra 29 minutes!).

Any times for ELS or other adjustments will be communicated separately.

🍁 Iteration 3 Marks

By Sunday night at 10pm we will have released your iteration 3 marks and final project mark.

You will (not yet, but on Sunday) see a number of grades available:

• Iteration 3 marks
  • iter3_manualmark (/13.5) - the mark your tutor gave your group for non-automarking
  • iter3_bonus (/3) - the mark your group for for bonus marks
  • iter3_finalmark (/30) - the sum of manual mark + automark adjusted for contributions
    • NOTE THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE BONUS MARKS
• Overall Project marks
  • project (/70) - the sum of iterations 0, 1, 2, and 3, as well as the bonus marks
• Figuring out if you've passed already
  • total_marks_before_exam (/80) - this is the sum of your labs (/10) and project mark (/70)
    • If you have 50/80 or higher, you have passed the course
    • If you have 40/80, you need to score at least 10/20 in the final exam to pass the course

These marks are subject to change if new information comes to light or mistakes were made in the determinations (happens from time to time).

If there are issues with your project mark, please reach out to your tutor. Whilst their response won't be necessarily quick, we will be thorough. Don't stress about "marks being locked in" as I have the ability to update marks until something like Christmas, so we have plenty of time if you're a particularly tricky case.

🌚 Extra Help Sessions

Two extra week 11 help sessions have been added to Sunday. Check them out .

🌻 Re-running of labs/project

If you would like to talk to your tutor about reruns for labs or project, you have until the end of Sunday the 27th of November to produce the new commit and email your tutor the branch name that you'd like to re-run. This is the cut-off for re-runs for T3. This doesn't mean they have to have it resolved by the end of Sunday night, but we need you to at least start the conversation.

End of week 10 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Wednesday 16 November 2022, 06:28:56 PM, last modified Wednesday 16 November 2022, 06:43:38 PM.

Hi everyone!

Hope everything has gone well with iteration 3. It's been incredible seeing everyone pick up the work and tackle the challenge. The term has flown by. It's crazy how much you've all managed to learn this term.

🐢 General Updates and reminders

• Tutorial 10 solutions are being released this weekend.
• All of the information about the exam was covered in the final exam lecture. The info page is here .

🍹PEER REVIEW ITER3 - you have only a few days to complete.

Everyone is required to complete their first peer review for iteration 3. This is invaluable feedback for your tutor to track how your group is performing together. You need to complete this by Monday @ 5pm!

FILL IT OUT NOW!!

Have a great weekend - you have some time before the exam and realistically most of you are pretty much ready for the exam, so things will be OK! :)

🙉 End of week 9 updates - week 10 lecture in person

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Tuesday 08 November 2022, 02:16:33 PM, last modified Tuesday 08 November 2022, 02:24:31 PM.

Hi everyone!

We're wrapping up week 9 - keep your heads down and keep focused. No more labs. No more new content. One tutorial. Make this weekend count, and keep steady next week. Updates below:

📣 Week 10 lecture IN PERSON

Our week 10 exam lecture will be in person . It will only take about an hour.

It will be in Mathews Theatre A (the place we had our very first lecture) as well as streamed online like normal.

💡MyExperience - more exam time??

Filling out MyExperience is one of the most helpful things you can do for the teaching team here in COMP1531. It would really mean a lot if you could just take 5 minutes to fill it in. The information is extremely useful for us in understanding how we're doing and where we need to focus attention.

We really need to hit 50% completion of the survey at a minimum for the results to be useful :)

Click here to fill it in!

⚠️ ALSO!‼️ For every % that we score over 50% I will add 1 extra minute onto the final exam!! A quick example summary below is:

🐢 General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Tutorial 9 solutions is being released this weekend.
• For lectures next week we will only have a Monday lecture to talk about the exam. There is no Wednesday lecture, but there are two pre-recorded BONUS (not assessable) lectures you watch if you are super curious!

🦃 Iteration 3 - Leaderboard & 1 week to go

Iteration 3 is due on Friday of week 10. Super soon. Good luck - you'll figure it out.

We will be running the leaderboard on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday of week 10.

Have a great weekend - so close! 1 week to go until the bulk of it's over :)

🦄 End of week 8 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Friday 04 November 2022, 10:21:01 AM, last modified Friday 04 November 2022, 10:22:11 AM.

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the end of week 8. Things are starting to wrap up soon! Your last lab is about to be submitted, the tutorials start to get quite light, the lecture content is also quite light. Buckle down and get through the next 14 days and we'll be there in no time.

🐢 General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Lab08 is due on Monday (last lab!)
• Tutorial 8 solutions have been released.
• We will talk about auth / tokens on Monday, first thing! It's the only part of iteration 3 we still have to talk about.

🍉 Iteration 2 results

Your iteration 2 marks and comments have been made available to you on the grades page of Webcms3. Some tutors may not have finishing marking yet so your results may still be 0 - but these tutors should have emailed you already about this. If you have any follow up questions about your grades after this time, please email your tutor directly .

It's important to remember that these marks are tentative, and whilst very rare, are still subject to change as new information comes to light.

Only 2 weeks to go until you've completed 70% of the course. You're on the home stretch, and the best part about this period of the course is you're more equipped than ever to tackle the challenges in front of you. Let's keep going.

🌻 End of week 7 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Wednesday 26 October 2022, 11:16:51 PM, last modified Wednesday 26 October 2022, 11:24:33 PM.

Hi everyone!

Good luck submitting your second iteration tomorrow :) Most groups seem well on their way - congratulations for pushing through. And for the groups that started quite late or are struggling, good luck and use our teaching team to help you were you need.

And of course, to the minority of those dealing with some genuine group issues, please reach out to your tutor :)

🐢 General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Because we were late with the leaderboard yesterday (Wednesday), we will run it again today after lunch and have it up no later than 10pm.
• Lab 5 marks have been released on grades page .
• There is no lab due on Monday, yay!
• Tutorial 7 solutions will be released on Friday.

🍹PEER REVIEW ITER2 - you have only a few days to complete.

Everyone is required to complete their first peer review for iteration 2. This is invaluable feedback for your tutor to track how your group is performing together.

You need to complete your peer review by Monday afternoon of week 8.

FILL IT OUT NOW!!

🦃 Iteration 3

Iteration 3 will be released by 8pm on Saturday night! Similar to iteration 2, you have 3 weeks to complete it before it's due.

Iteration 3 for most of you will be a tone down from iteration 2. It will be a chunk more work to do,, but with a much smaller set of new concept

Enjoy your weekend, and once again congratulations for managing things so well to date. We're getting closer to the end of the journey.

❄️ End of week 6 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 20 October 2022, 04:52:09 PM.

Hi everyone!

We hope your flex week is going well. Very straightforward update this week.

🦃 Iteration 2 - Leaderboard & 1 week to go

Iteration 2 is due on Friday of week 7. One week! Keep working away and use the course staff as necessary :)

We will be running the leaderboard on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday of week 7. Don't forget to check it out! You will need to select iteration 2 from the drop down next week.

Enjoy the rest of flex week(end)!

🎩 End of week 5 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 13 October 2022, 08:02:00 AM, last modified Thursday 13 October 2022, 12:25:39 PM.

Hey everyone!

Congratulations for making it through to the end of week 5. Flex week is coming up next week! We're excited for you all to have a week without any classes. Your tutors have generally said that your performance in iteration 1 has been quite impressive overall - so congratulations for that.

I will also remind you of two things:

1. By now you NEED to have watched week 4 lectures.
2. By end of flex week you need to have watched week 5 lectures.
3. Make a strong start on iteration 2 this weekend if you haven't. We see a lot of students fall behind between iteration 1 and 2.

🐢General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Lab 4 marks have been released on grades page . Tutorial 5 solutions have also been released.
• Lab 5 is due on SATURDAY WEEK 5 AT 10PM. That is tomorrow.

🍉 Iteration 1 results

Your iteration 1 marks and comments will be made available to you on Webcms3 by 10pm tonight (Friday). They will be able to be found on the grades page of Webcms3. If you have any follow up questions about your grades after this time, please email your tutor directly.

More details about your automarking result have been pushed to your repo on a branch that should be called iter1-results. If you would like a re-run (as per the spec) you must start this conversation with your tutor within 7 days of the results release.

🌈 Enjoy your flex week

Stay safe and stay well everyone!

🦓 End of week 2 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 22 September 2022, 04:11:33 PM, last modified Thursday 22 September 2022, 04:13:33 PM.

Hi everyone!

We hope you've had a great end to your second week! Lots of positive stories coming my way from tutors who are enjoying the groups in their class.

Good luck submitting iteration 0 tonight - it should be relatively easy, and then you can take a little bit of a breather this weekend before things start to progressively pick up next week.

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Please don't forget to watch lectures. Some students start to fall behind. Students who fall behind lectures tend to on average get lower marks in the course. Ensure that by Sunday night you've watched all of week 1 & 2 lectures .
• Tutorial 2 solutions have been released.
• Lab 2 is due on Monday at 5pm.
• Please regularly check for merge requests and spec updates on your labs and project! Every day or two check out the git commit history or any course-pushed pending merge requests.
• Complete this quick 30 second survey about the next in-person lecture time
• Next Friday (week 3) from 1:30pm-2pm I will host a Q&A on zoom just in case anyone wants to pop in and ask questions about the project, labs, course - anything. I won't be helping individual students with issues (that is for forum and help sessions) but it's a chance to essentially have some extended lecture Q&A time.

🌳 Lab01

Your lab01 has been marked, and your "theoretical" marks can be seen on the grades page . Remember, these marks don't count for anything! It was just a trial run.

Your mark has been awarded between 0 and 1. If your mark appears as "-0.1", it is because there was an error whilst marking (this could be our problem or your problem). This is just a place holder mark. You have not gotten negative marks. It's kind of like a "null" We're still double checking a number of these "-0.1" cases so if you got this please check again on Sunday morning as it may be fixed.

You can read our detailed info about looking at your lab marks here - this is a very useful guide !!

🦃 Iteration 1

Iteration 1 will be released on Sunday evening at 8pm, keep an eye out for merge request in your project repo. Introductory video is contained in the spec. Take your time to really read the spec and watch the video, as it will all be very helpful in getting started.

Iteration 1 is due on the Friday of week 4, so you have around 2 weeks to complete it.

Now that you've seen the week 2 lectures, we expect to see engagement with standups, meetings, task boards, etc from everyone between now and iteration 1 being due.

⏰ Next week

In week 3 we will learn about continuous integration (an exciting and critical part of software engineering) as well as touch on a lot more static verification. These are exciting topics.

Next week's lectures are all online. See you Monday :)

🐕 End of week 1 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 15 September 2022, 10:46:13 PM, last modified Friday 16 September 2022, 11:25:26 AM.

Hi everyone!

Now that we're wrapping up week 1, it's a great time to summarise the key things that happened this week and give you some pointers for week 2.

Week 1 recap

The key things that happened in week 1 are:

• Week 1 lecture slides and recordings can be found on this page .
• Week 1 tutorial and lab content links can be found on this page .
  • Week 1 tutorial solutions are released today (always released on Friday). They are on the solutions branch in the tutorial's repo.
  • Week 1 lab solutions will be released shortly after the deadline next week (checkout the "solutions" branch on the repos)
  • Week 1 lab marks will be released next Friday (Friday of week 2)
    • Next Friday, to see more about the marks you got the lab and other information, check out the bottom of the Labs page under "Lab marks"
• Your project groups were formed during class and the project specification is being released tonight (see below).
  • If you're unsure what group you're in you should email your tutor.
• If you're still a bit unsure about any of the software or tools to setup for the course check out the getting started guide .

Project groups

During your week 1 class your tutor will have finalised your project groups in your lab time.

A reminder that whilst you aren't required to communicate via the Microsoft teams channel we make for you, it's important to note that if teamwork disputes arise or you make claims about other team members contributions later in the course - the only places we will look to for evidence of how you interact with your group are:

1. The project check-ins and iteration demonstrations
2. Gitlab contributions (code you push)
3. Peer reviews at the end of the iteration
4. Any UNSW emails sent between group members
5. Conversations that occur on Microsoft teams

If we need to analyse group communication, we simply won't be able to look at things like Facebook, Discord, Slack, etc, as these are out of our control and are open to tampering etc that make it unfair to consider reasonable evidence. However, anything in your Microsoft teams chat we'll happily take into account. If you're uncertain about anything here or aren't agreeing in your group how to communicate, talk to your tutor in week 2 and they will help you figure it all out! :)

If you don't have your group sorted, or weren't added to your groups Microsoft teams chat, please email your tutor ASAP.

Project release

As of Friday night week 1 (tonight) a group project repository was created for each group. The repository is called " project-backend ". You can find your group repository (if you haven't already) on the homepage of gitlab.cse.unsw.edu.au . If you can't find your repository, please post on the forum. If you can find the repo, but you're in the wrong group, please email your tutor ASAP.

The first stage of the project is iteration 0 and is due in 7 days (next Friday night - week 2). It's a very easy stage.

Please watch the introductory video from the project . This was recorded for last term, but only very few things have changed in iteration 0 and I have edited the video accordingly.

The most important thing to do right now is to start messaging or emailing your group members and to start reading through the project specification. During your class time this week you can sync up about it and start some early planning, and I would strongly encourage you to organise times to meet next week. From week 3 onwards we will be expecting groups to follow a more rigid meeting as we move onto the next stage of the project.

Over the coming days, t here may continue to be slight changes to your group primarily due to students potentially dropping the course before census date. Your tutors will always support you and find solutions that will make things OK :)

Things to keep an eye on for week 2

• Your week 1 lab is due 5pm on Monday the 19th of June. Remember that lab01 does not count for any marks.
• Your week 2 tutorial + lab is critical for you to spend time with your group and tutor to get stuck into the project.
• Help Sessions start running in week 2.
• Sometimes we push updates to your repos (e.g. labs or project) that may appear as merge requests in the left hand sidebar. Keep an eye out for it. Your tutor(s) can always help out if you're confused.
• For students with class on Thursday (the public holiday) your tutor should have already reached out to you about new arrangements.
• Lectures next week:
  • Our next lecture is Monday evening! It will be online .
  • Don't forget that we have a second lecture every week that UNSW made a mistake in not timetabling. It might move around slightly week by week but remember these are always recorded! So if you can't make it live just watch the recording :)
  • Next week's second lecture will be on Wed from 3pm-5pm due to a conflict of timing.
  • If in doubt just look at the lecture timetable page .

Other than that, have a great weekend!

🐙 Welcome to COMP1531! + IMPORTANT Group Preference

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 05 September 2022, 02:42:00 AM, last modified Monday 05 September 2022, 02:42:38 AM.

Hi everyone,

A very early welcome to COMP1531 for 22T3. This early welcome is predominately to give you time to complete the g roup preference form below .

A more "full" introduction with information and summaries will be sent out next week, but for now here are a few things to get you prepped for term.

1. 🐼 (Read below) Complete the group preference form for the major project* (DUE IN ~5 DAYS!!)
2. 😽 Go and read the course outline . You should also watch the welcome video . It's the one from last term, but the course is basically the same except that:
   1. Lab marks change
   2. Project 70 to 60
3. 🙊 Join the forum and introduce yourself ! (you were invited on your email z5555555@unsw.edu.au)

❗️*(IMPORTANT) Group Preference for Major Project

As specified in the course outline , COMP1531 has a major project component that is a 5 person, 9 week group project that constitutes 70% of the course assessment. The successful and equitable formation of amazing groups of students for this major project is a priority for us. And we need to finalise these groups before week 1.

For us to form groups effectively, you are required to complete the preference form .

This form asks you to:

• Optionally preference 1 other student to be in your group of 5.
  • If you preference someone, to avoid us disregarding the preference, they must:
    • (1) Be enrolled in the same class at the same time (i.e. same code on MyUNSW)
    • (2) Fill out the form preferencing you as well
• Answer a few further questions that help us form groups, regardless of whether you have a person-preference

The form is due on Saturday 10th of September at 5pm!! That's a little over 5 days from now.

We sadly aren't in a position to accept late preferences, so please fill it in prior to then. Preferences are not guarantees that you will be in a group with that person, however, in nearly all cases we make it work.

If you don't have anyone to preference, or only have one preference, don't even worry! That's very normal. You might hear murmurs from other students that you could end up with a "horror group" for COMP1531. Believe it or not, typically about 50% of student's don't provide preferences, and we just randomly match students in the same class.

We can assure you that while groups that struggle do exist, they only make up a small numbers of groups. We have structured the course and assessment very intentionally to have processes in place to ensure that if you work hard and follow the rules, that your accomplishments should reflect your mark, even if you end up with a difficult group.

Lastly, a reminder that we can't manually enrol you in a class that is full, and we aren't accepting more than 1 preference per person as this ensures equitable group formation.

We'll reach out again next info with much more information about getting started and first classes!

🎃 Until then, enjoy your week and stay safe. The entire team can't wait to meet you.

Thank you for your feedback!

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 05 September 2022, 02:40:05 AM.

Hi everyone!

Yes, it's me, the ghost of COMP1531. I've spent most of today churning through the MyExperience feedback from 22T2 and taking extensive notes (this happens every term). I wanted to spend the time to addressing some of the feedback!

From my rough count, about 1 in 8 students didn't have a very good time this term (to over-simplify it). I really wanted to speak to those student's first and talk a little bit about what happened.

(1) Two major things that impacted the term

Thankfully, this is the 6th time I've run COMP1531, and this helps me get a very good feel for what does and doesn't work. We've experimented with a lot, and I want to start with the two major things that I am confident are the primary culprits for some of the challenges we faced this term.

(1.1) COMP1531 running in T2 for the first time

In 2021 CSE decided to run COMP1531 in T2 (3 times a year). This term was the first time it happened. Running a course in a new term can always have interesting side effects. The most notable one though was that the average competency of a COMP student coming into this course was much lower on average than normal. Normally when someone does COMP1531 they've pretty much always done COMP1521 and then about a 33/33/33 chance they've done COMP2521 before, during, or after. This usually leads to higher capacity for students to step up in challenging situations, and naturally our course has over years trended towards that type of student. For example, typically a student who does 1531 in T1 is actually in their second year.

Now what is the solution to this? Not sure. Generally it's not good to make brash decisions. We'll see how next year goes first, but solutions can range from simplifying course content in every term (not the most sound approach) or potentially putting in other minimum requirements to do this course. This is unlikely something I am involved with because it's a bit of a longer term strategic piece, but I more just wanted to canvas that this was a real thing and it had quite a lot of trickle on effects (e.g. students saying that X was too hard when it's never been too hard for student's previously).

Even though we did have a lot of students struggle, I would like to commend nearly everyone for stepping up to the challenge. I think the persistence and ambition shown by so many of you is genuinely wonderful.

(1.2) Just a lot of group work problems

I wouldn't say we had a lot of bad groups this term, but I'd say we had a lot of normal groups just going through some kind of ordeal. E.G. 40% of groups were fine,10% were hellish, and 50% had a bit of a storm at one point or another. Nearly all of these cases came from someone just simply not doing the work.

Not why is this? It would be easy to scapegoat the preference system, but my experience tells me it's not that simple. I think it's a combination of a trickle effect of (1.1) (above) resulting in people struggling to perform and it impacting others, and then also just a little bit of bad luck. We notice this sometimes with teaching - sometimes different cohorts of students are different and it can be surprising.

For context, we had as many complex "escalations" of group work issues in this term than we did in my previous 4 terms of teaching this course.

(2) Getting into some more details

Alright! Now I want to get into some more granular feedback and let know either what we're doing about it, or if we aren't doing much, why that is the case.

• (2.1) Pipeline failures are annoying
  • Yes, I agree - it is an ongoing conversation with the school
• (2.2) Labs were too hard or annoying
  • The labs are a huge improvement this term and I'm proud of the team for what they've done, but I am going to restructure the assessment for future terms to have one of those only need 80% of the marks to get full marks things. This will take the edge of those that felt the pressure to do them all.
• (2.3) Typescript felt a bit useless
  • Yeah, probably was! I've become certain that static typing is an important part of this course (in terms of introducing it), but that doesn't mean our initial attempt was perfect. We also knew that we wouldn't get it perfect, which is why it was quite light in terms of any assessable outcomes. We're going to continue working on this, including making the transition much easier.
• (2.4) It would be good to have a livestream Q&A sometimes throughout term
  • Agreed! Cool idea, might give that a go
• (2.5) There was no leniency on late submissions
  • This one is tricky. We USED to have labs due earlier than they are now, and there would be a late penalty period with leniency. But after much demand for students asking to have labs due later, we ate into the entire leniency period to have them due as a late as possible. So we do our best here!
• (2.6) The project was worth too much!
  • Yeah, maybe. So when I took over I think the project was worth 36%. I slowly started moving it up to 50% over terms. There was a strong consensus across the community of staff to raise that up further so we tried out 70% this term - 50% is just too low for the amount of work it is.
  • For T3 I will be moving it to 60% and increasing the weighting of the exam again. Labs are dealt with in (2.2).
  • As part of this we also usually find ways to trim the work.
• (2.7) I didn't know how to do X and I was told to teach myself
  • This one is tricky...sometimes people say this and it's like "yeah fair point" and other times they say it and we genuinely think "it's reasonable for us to expect this of you." This is a tricky part about CS in general. In very early COMP courses you are mostly spoonfed things in very controlled ways. By the time you reach the end of your degree you'll go through courses where you are expected to teach yourself a new programming language. We do our part on upskilling you for this journey, but we don't always get it right, and will continue to reflect and improve!
• (2.8) I felt disadvantaged by my group's size!
  • OK this is another tricky one. I know I've said this a few times. As a general rule the quality of your team members + how you operate as a team is far more of a leading metric of how
• (2.9) Because of my bad group, I didn't get a fair mark
  • MyExperience was filled out well before iteration 3 marking was returned and scaling was finalised. So there is a chance feedback here was very in the moment for people. What I'd encourage everyone to do though, is if you don't feel like you were given the correct mark, please reach out to me via email with decisions your tutor has come to that you think are unreasonable. I'd be very happy to take a closer look! _what

(3) Things we're just changing anyway even without feedback

• Making the transition to Typescript easier
• Tidying up due dates to push student's to learn a bit more before flex week
• Having a more structured check in every week to basically ensure tutors can hold groups accountable (which catches on bad team members earlier). Basically finding ways to clamp down on bad team members sooner
• A deployment video for the lab, not just one for the project

There was a lot of other feedback that were raising issues that actually aren't "issues" but we might not have been clear enough that there are solutions to these problems, or not clear enough that we fix things behind the scenes for edge cases. We'll get better at communicating those.

🙉 End of week 9 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 28 July 2022, 10:48:00 PM.

Hi everyone!

We're wrapping up week 9 - keep your heads down and keep focused. No more labs. No more new content. One tutorial. Make this weekend count, and keep steady next week. Updates below:

💡MyExperience - more exam time??

Filling out MyExperience is one of the most helpful things you can do for the teaching team here in COMP1531. It would really mean a lot if you could just take 5 minutes to fill it in. The information is extremely useful for us in understanding how we're doing and where we need to focus attention.

We really need to hit 50% completion of the survey at a minimum for the results to be useful :)

Click here to fill it in!

⚠️ ALSO!‼️ For every % that we score over 45% I will add 1 extra minute onto the final exam!! A quick example summary below is:

🐢 General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Tutorial 9 solutions will be released this weekend.
• For lectures next week we will only have a Monday lecture to talk about the exam. There is no Tuesday lecture, but there are two pre-recorded bonus lectures you watch!

🦃 Iteration 3 - Leaderboard & 1 week to go

Iteration 3 is due on Friday of week 10. 8 days!

We will be running the leaderboard on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday of week 10.

The Monday leaderboard will be run quite late in the day - most likely in the evening.

Have a great weekend - so close! 1 week to go until the bulk of it's over :)

🌻 End of week 7 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Wednesday 13 July 2022, 11:25:54 PM, last modified Wednesday 13 July 2022, 11:56:44 PM.

Hi everyone!

Welcome back from flex week, and congrats for wrapping up iteration 2. For those who attended the lecture in person this week, it was so wonderful to get to see you!

🐢 General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Lab 5 marks have been released on grades page .
• There is no lab due on Monday, yay!
• Tutorial 7 solutions will be released for Saturday (tomorrow) morning.
• There is a quick single question for you all to answer if you get the chance .

🍹PEER REVIEW ITER2 - you have only a few days to complete.

Everyone is required to complete their first peer review for iteration 2. This is invaluable feedback for your tutor to track how your group is performing together.

You need to complete your peer review by Monday morning on Monday the 18th of July (week 8).

FILL IT OUT NOW!!

🦃 Iteration 3

Iteration 3 will be released by 8am on Monday morning! Similar to iteration 2, you have 3 weeks to complete it before it's due.

Iteration 3 for most of you will be a tone down from iteration 2. It will be a chunk more work to do,, but with a much smaller set of new concept.

Enjoy your weekend, and once again congratulations for managing things so well to date. We're getting closer to the end of the journey.

❄️ End of week 6 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Wednesday 06 July 2022, 09:12:45 PM, last modified Thursday 07 July 2022, 02:47:35 PM.

Hi everyone!

We hope your flex week is going well. Don't forget that lab05 is due on Monday of week 7. Besides that, a couple of reminders below :)

For those impacted by the floods, if you need support please contact me ASAP or apply for special consideration. UNSW is able to assist for those impacted by disaster.

🦃 Iteration 2 - Leaderboard & 1 week to go

Iteration 2 is due on Friday of week 7. Keep working hard :)

We will be running the leaderboard on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday of week 7. Don't forget to check it out!

🧑 In-person lecture Monday Week 7

The Monday week 7 lecture will be held in person at the UNSW campus! This is the 6pm-8pm lecture. It will be run inside Ainsworth G03 ( the lecture theatre just next to the CSE building ). It's probably the only lecture being run this term in-person, so come along and we'll have some fun!!

It will still be streamed for those online.

Enjoy the rest of flex week!

✈️ End of week 3 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 16 June 2022, 03:45:52 PM, last modified Thursday 16 June 2022, 09:45:25 PM.

Hi everyone!

We hope you're having a great week 3. Nearly a third of the way through the course. Keep it up!!

🐢General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Because of some prior commitments I've had to move the week 4 Monday and Tuesday lecture slightly. Monday is pushed back an hour. The Tuesday one is moved to Wednesday. They are all pre-recorded too. This has been reflected on the timetable. Thanks for your understanding.
• We are now encouraging all COMP1531 students using any CSE machine (vlab, lab machines, or ssh in vscode) to please run the command "~cs1531/bin/setup" once during the term (then close and reopen your terminal windows). If you have already run this, you don't need to run it again. This command is to kind of "get your computer ready for 1531", which is particularly important for later weeks.
• Tutorial 3 solutions will be released for Saturday morning.
• Lab 3 is due on Monday week 4 at 5pm.
• As per last week, if you're interested in being part of one of CSESoc's programming competitions with a prize click here . As always CSESoc continue to do incredible things so check out their website or follow them on Facebook.

😻 Lab02 Marks

Your lab02 has been marked, and your marks can be seen on the grades page .

Your mark has been awarded between 0 and 1. If your mark appears as "-0.1", it is because there was an error whilst marking (this could be our problem or your problem). This is just a place holder mark. You have not gotten negative marks.

If you believe that you need to be remarked for your lab (after a very trivial change to your code), talk to your lab assist this week. Please read this detailed info page about your lab marks here !! If you have any issues you can follow up with your lab assist in your lab time during week 4.

🍉 Iteration 0 results

Your iteration 0 marks and comments will be made available to you on the grades page of Webcms3 by 10pm on Friday the 17th of June (week 3). If you have any follow up questions about your grades after this time, please email your tutor directly.

🦃 Iteration 1 - Leaderboard & 1 week to go

Iteration 1 is due in 7 days (Friday of week 4). If you haven't yet started, get to it!

We will be running the leaderboard (as per section 9.2 in the spec) to have your tentative marks available on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of week 4. The leaderboard will be updated around lunchtime. We will not be running the leaderboard more often and won't be doing individual re-runs for students. This is a new initiative of the last 12 months that is aimed to give you more support by giving you an indicative of your progress without telling you exactly what is wrong (which would undermine the nature of the assessment).

You will be able to access the leaderboard here on Monday (before then it might have a 404 error).

🌈 Next week

In week 4 the content we learn will focus mainly on web servers, with a bit of advanced javascript function features. All of next week's content isn't relevant until week 5 (for both labs and for next project iteration).

So if you're feeling under the pump with iteration 1 just catch up on the recordings next weekend before week 5.

See you Monday!! :)

DELETING old COMP1531 group projects

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Wednesday 23 September 2020, 10:52:00 PM.

Hi everyone,

If you're receiving this message, it is because you were previously enrolled in COMP1531.

On MONDAY next week, we will be DELETING some of the old Gitlab repositories from the COMP1531 major project. A number of them are quite large and they are taking up considerable space.

If you wish to keep a copy of your COMP1531 project for your own records, please clone your repos before Monday.

This only affects project related repositories, those under the 'COMP1531' namespace (e.g. 'COMP1531/20T1/H11B-TeamName'). Your own personal projects (e.g. 'z1234567/20T1-cs1531-lab01') are not affected. Those are only removed once you are no longer enrolled at CSE.

Rob

Course Honours List

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Monday 25 May 2020, 01:59:23 PM.

Hi everyone,

Now that results are out, I can now publish an honours list of sorts. This is the top 20 students by overall course mark (the mark we're not allowed to release :-( ). Congratulations to all of you!

     1    Luxa, Emily
     2    Fan, Leighton Legend
     3    Day, Cameron Robert
     4    Briant, Benjamin Christopher
     5    Cunio, Alexander Mark
     6    Wang, Weijie
     7    Finlayson, Oliver John
     8    Medimurac, Nikola
     9    Lee Solano, Lorenzo
    10    Yip, Wai Lam Fergus
    11    Lin, Zhiyang
    12    Jones, Callum Owen
    13    Das, Sandeep
    14    Liu, Xin
    15    Wong, Vincent Wan Chiang
    16    Ha, William Bao Loc
    17    Lee, Anson
    18    Chang, Ya-Ting
    19    Qin, Zhihan
    20    Meggs, Jonah Thomas

The marks amongst the top 20 students (and even the top 50!) are extremely close, so don't feel disparaged if you didn't make this list. As grading for this term was SY/NF, we didn't do a lot to try and differentiate between the high-performing students, as we normally would.

In general, you all did really well in this course, considerably better than students in previous offerings, not only in terms of marks, but also in terms of helping each other out in the forums and supporting your classmates during a difficult term.

While you were introduced to me under somewhat unusual circumstances, it has been fun teaching you all and I hope you all do well in the future, both at UNSW and beyond. Our paths may cross again in future :-)

Rob

Hope you're doing well!

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 11 May 2020, 02:47:57 AM.

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to say a big congrats to all of you for making it through T1 and wrapping up your project/exam for this course last week. It was no doubt a wild ride trying to adjust to the online learning, but I'm sure it all went smoothly under Rob's leadership and the insanely awesome support from your tutors. If you get a chance you should definitely take the 1-2 minutes it takes just to email Rob or your tutors and say THANKS FOR BEING AWESOME. The world can never do with too much kindness :)

I also wanted to apologise for my somewhat sudden absence from the course. Things come up in life sometimes that you have to tackle head on, but thankfully at this stage I'll be around teaching other subjects in T2 and T3, so hopefully I'll see some of you around (probably via video). If any of you want to stay in touch longer term would recommend hunting me down on LinkedIn!

Never stop looking after yourselves or looking after each other, and thanks for always being a pleasant cohort to teach for the first 5 weeks of the term.

Exam Conclusion

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Thursday 07 May 2020, 08:09:52 AM.

Hi everyone,

At 9AM the exam will conclude. If you are still working, please ensure you commit and push all work by then. You will lose access to your repository at that time.

Owing to timetabling, there are a few students who are sitting the exam at different times over the next few days. As such, please don't discuss the contents of the exam in any public arena . I know it's unusual, but unfortunately these are the times we're in.

The marking of the exam will begin shortly, but, sadly, we're not allowed to release the mark to you till after the official release of results. That means that you won't get your exam mark and course result (Satisfactory or Fail) till the 22nd.

Rob

Exam Starts Now!

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Wednesday 06 May 2020, 09:00:45 AM.

Hi everyone,

The time is upon us. The link on the 'Exam info' page will now let you access the exam.

To preserve integrity, you should cease any communication with other students in this course . Please remember that this is an individual assessment and any attempts at collaboration will be considered plagiarism.

If you are not able to use the given page to access your exam repository, please make a post on the forum. You are now only able to post to instructors.

Good luck with the exam. Myself and the rest of the COMP1531 staff are all rooting for you.

Rob

Exam

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Tuesday 05 May 2020, 01:39:28 PM.

Hi everyone,

As you're all hopefully aware, the exam is being held tomorrow from 9am.

I've updated the 'Exam info' page on the course website with the link you can use to gain access to the exam. The link will enable you to get access once the exam has started.

I've also updated the page with information on what help is available during the exam and how you can check to see if all your tools are working correctly. If you have not done so already, please read everything on that page. I know it's a lot of information, but it's important you know it before the exam starts.

Rob

Help Session On Monday

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Friday 01 May 2020, 08:52:08 PM.

Hi everyone,

As it says in the title, this notice is just to let you all know that there will be an additional help session on Monday 10AM-12PM for anyone that wants to get individual assistance with their exam preparation.

As always, the forum remains open for any questions as well.

Rob

More Exam Info & Lab 9 marks

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Wednesday 29 April 2020, 04:06:43 PM.

Hi everyone,

A couple of new pieces of information.

Firstly, based on questions I've received, I've updated the 'Exam info' with the general structure of the exam. Additionally, there are also links to 'requirements.txt' files you can use to install all the python packages you may need for the exam. There is one both for use at home and one for if you're using the CSE infrastructure. We recommend installing the packages ahead of time, so you don't have any issues on the day itself.

Secondly, the automarking for lab 9 is now complete. You can view the results through the course website, by clicking the button next to your mark. The marking was designed to be generous, so you can still get 2/2 even if you weren't able to satisfy all the criteria (code coverage, passing our tests, etc.). That's why you should check your full results, even if you got full marks. The solutions to the exercises are available in the usual place. In that repo, there is an 'incorrect' branch that contains the deliberately broken solutions we used in the final stage of automarking.

While some of the exercises in the lab were designed to be challenging, based on the random sampling of submissions I inspected, there are still a few of you that seem to be struggling with the process of writing tests to increase confidence in your implementation and then measuring code coverage to increase confidence in your tests. This is something you will need to do for the exam, so you would be wise to try and fix your solutions before you look at the solutions we've provided.

Rob

Peer Assessment Reminder, Exam Info, and Week 11

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Friday 24 April 2020, 05:04:58 PM.

Hi everyone,

Just a few things you all need to be aware of.

If you have not done so already, complete the peer assessment now!

I've updated the exam info page on the course website with some information based on questions I received in the Wednesday lecture. I've also added a link to the Kahoot you did in the tutorial this week. I will post an announcement if it the page is updated further.

Lastly, if you are in a Friday tutorial, your timetable may show that you have a tutorial in week 11. This is incorrect. Because our quiet week was in week 8, you did not miss out on a tutorial, so there is no need for a replacement.

Rob

Exam and revision Q&A

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Tuesday 21 April 2020, 11:09:03 PM.

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned in the lecture today, in tomorrow's lecture I will be holding a Q&A about the exam and revision. If you have any pressing questions, as tomorrow is the last lecture, it is the best opportunity to ask them. Also, if you want individual help, there are help sessions tomorrow and Thursday this week and we've added another one next week on Friday (see the spreadsheet). Depending on how the sessions are utilised, we may add more.

Another reminder, fill in the peer assessment form if you haven't done so already .

Rob

Project Peer Review

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Monday 20 April 2020, 02:52:27 PM.

Hi everyone,

Congratulations on completing the project for COMP1531! Don't forget that your demos are this week so it's important that you attend and show off all the features of the final version of your app.

For this project, it's important that the markers have a clear idea of how you all worked and communicated as a team. For that reason, you will need to fill out a peer assessment form where you answer some questions about how you and your teammates contributed to the project. While we know this course has had to run under highly unusual circumstances, and as consequence many of you may not have been able to make the contribution you wanted to, we ask that you be honest in your peer review . In the event that you pass the exam hurdle (>50%), but your scaled project mark is too low for you to pass the course overall, you will be given an opportunity to make your case directly to me, and some leniency regarding your project contribution may be offered.

Please note that under no circumstances should you attempt to influence someone else's answers to the questions in the review. This includes:

• Telling someone what to write.
• Telling someone what you wrote.
• Colluding on answers.
• Letting someone else fill it out for you or filling out someone else's.

The answers you give will only be visible to myself and the rest of the COMP1531 staff. Your teammates will NOT see your responses.

Please fill the form out as soon as possible . You may not get a mark until you do.

The form is available here via moodle (*shudder*):

https://moodle.telt.unsw.edu.au/mod/assign/view.php?id=2937947

Rob

Exam information

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Wednesday 15 April 2020, 04:21:47 PM.

Hi everyone,

The final exam for the course has been scheduled to start at 9am on the 6th of May and conclude at 9am on the 7th of May. I've put up an exam information page here . It may be updated with new information but I will also make an announcement if that happens.

One thing you may want to consider is what environment you will do that exam in. If you've been having trouble maintaining a stable connection to VLAB, I suggest setting up python and git on your own computer. You won't be required to run any submit commands or similar during the exam, so as long as you have python and git set up you shouldn't need to connect to VLAB or the remote login servers at all.

Rob

Lab 9

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Saturday 11 April 2020, 12:21:56 PM.

Hi everyone,

Lab 9 is now available for those who want to get an early start on it. As noted before, for this lab we'll be running a test of our take-home exam infrastructure, to hopefully avoid any problems on the day of the exam itself. As such, in order to access the lab, you'll need to go to this link here and agree to a few things. Please note that while that page says you shouldn't ask questions on the forum, that only applies to the final exam, not this lab task. You are, as always, welcome to ask questions about any of the lab tasks on the forum.

The lab is due at the end of week 10, and requires knowledge of a few things I won't cover till Tuesday, so don't feel you have to do it immediately. The style of question in the lab is similar to questions you may be asked in the exam, but the solutions are largely based on material from weeks 7 and 9. The actual exam will cover material from all weeks of the course.

Rob

Project frontend update & final exam info

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Thursday 09 April 2020, 03:56:59 PM.

Hi everyone,

As we haven't had lectures this past week, I've not had the chance to update you on a couple of things.

Firstly, we've released small update to frontend of the project. It makes it easier for you to use ASCII art for the hangman component of the iteration 3, if that's what you want to do. Previously, the frontend would squash multiple whitespace characters into one, but now it no longer does!

Secondly, the details for how the final exam will run have firmed up. The exams unit have allocated us a day when we can run the exam, as many of you will have already seen through myunsw. You will have 24 hours to do the exam. This is designed to account for those of you who are in different timezones or have other commitments on that day.

Exactly how the exam will be delivered will be clearer tomorrow when lab 9 is released. As you should all know, testing is important, so we will be using the lab task to run a test of the exam infrastructure. Lab 9 will be due at the end of week 10, so you have considerably more than 24 hours to do it.

Rob

Implementing pass/fail grading

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Thursday 26 March 2020, 05:22:27 PM.

Hi everyone,

Please read this all the way to the end as there is important information you should know at the bottom.

As you are all by now aware, a decision was made at the faculty level that most CSE courses should move to a pass/fail grading system. While COMP1531 has a major project, the fact that it accounts for only 36% of the course means it was not sufficiently project focused to justify an exemption.

I know this will disappoint many of you, for many different reasons, but this is an extraordinary situation we're in, so extraordinary measures are appropriate.

In spite of this change, I would like to assure you that the course will go ahead as planned. You will still have the opportunity to learn, practice, and get feedback on the course content. You will still get a mark at the end, it just won't appear on your transcript or count toward your WAM.

If you're feeling less motivated to work on the project, or other parts of the course, I would just like to remind you of a few things:

• The material we cover in this course is not only useful, but in many cases necessary to perform well in a computing degree and in the technology industry at large.
• A well-built software project is a good thing to have in your portfolio when applying for internships and graduate jobs.
• Working well as part of a team is a hard, but necessary, skill to acquire and requires lots of practice to get good at.

On a personal note, I didn't want to tell you my opinion on the possibility of a grading change as I feared it would influence the feedback I got. However, now that a decision has been made, I can tell you that I was pushing to keep the grading system as it was and to account for lost marks by exercising discretion and allowing for an atypical mark distribution. As such, I join many of you in being disappointed at today's outcome. That said, I will continue to teach you to the best of my ability and I hope you all continue to learn at the best of your ability.

Lastly, in light of all this happening and the uncertainty it has caused, I know, for some of you, this has interfered with your ability to complete iteration 2. As such, I'm offering an extension for iteration 2 till Tuesday 4PM (right before the lecture). However, I also want to ensure that those who have been working hard toward the Sunday deadline, and have essentially already completed their work, are rewarded for their efforts. As such, I will give a 5 bonus marks for the project for those that submit before the Sunday deadline. This is in terms of the whole project mark (out of 100) and can be used to make up for lost marks in any of the 3 iterations.

Rob

Pass/Fail grading

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Wednesday 25 March 2020, 11:16:22 PM.

Hi everyone,

Apologies, but another important announcement to make. As you're aware there has been discussion of moving courses at this university to having a final grade of pass or fail instead of a mark out of 100. For this course, no decision has been made yet regarding this. While the survey over the weekend indicated that it is a somewhat controversial idea, and this is ultimately an academic decision made by academic staff, I would still like to hear from you if you have any specific questions or concerns about it. I've made a pinned post on the forum with some more details of how the grading system would work. I want to hear from both people who are in favour and who are against pass/fail grading, so please put any questions or concerns you have as a follow-up to that post. Please do this as soon as possible as a decision will likely be made very soon.

Additionally, a reminder that there is a post where you can ask questions about a take-home final exam. A decision about that will also be made very soon.

As always, please be considerate to your fellow students in this time.

Rob

Take home exam & Lab 6 deadline extension

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Tuesday 24 March 2020, 11:17:59 PM.

Hi everyone,

As discussed in today's lecture, it is looking likely we will be having a take home exam in this course. I've put up the poll where you can indicate your preference for either a 12 or 24 hour take home exam. Mine and the tutors preference is for a 12 hour take home exam, but we do want your feedback on this. All I ask is that, if you haven't already, watch the first part of my lecture from today where I explain my reasoning why I believe 12 hours is better. You can find the poll on the course website under 'Activities' in the menu.

I've also made a post on the forum where you can ask any questions you might have about how the exam will run. I've put the answers to a few common questions there already. As noted in the lecture, I'm particularly seeking feedback from the (minority of) people who indicated they did not want to do a take-home exam in the survey run by CSE.

Lastly, I've extended the deadline for lab 6 to Wednesday next week . This is so all of you can focus on the iteration 2 deadline. Lab 7 will be due at the end of week 8.

Rob

Lectures this week and help sessions

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Monday 23 March 2020, 07:57:55 PM.

Hi everyone,

Sorry about yet another notice, but there has been a lot happening over the past week as you all know.

One thing that came up in the Q&A on Friday was that there is still some confusion about lectures from last week onward. So, to reiterate, a ll lectures are now on Blackboard Collaborate, and are being held at the usual times. There's one on tomorrow at 4PM. If you click on the menu button on the top left then click on "Recordings", you can view the recordings that have been made so far. Recordings for the weeks 1-4 lectures are on Echo360 like before.

Over the weekend, we also changed how we operated help sessions, and added more sessions to the timetable . If you go to the course website and click on Help Sessions you can see the instructions for getting help during the session times. Please note that help is now provided on an individual basis, so you don't have to worry about sharing your code with other students. Hopefully this brings assistance more in line with how labs and in-person help sessions have traditionally operated.

As always, bear with us as we figure out the best ways to provide you the help you need for this course. We will try to avoid changing things as much as possible, but if necessary we may have to make further changes to ensure everyone can get this help.

Rob

URGENT: Assessment (final exam replacement) survey

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Saturday 21 March 2020, 03:59:32 PM, last modified Saturday 21 March 2020, 04:02:37 PM.

Hi everyone,

You will have already received an email about this, but just in case you missed it: CSE is running a school-wide survey on what should replace final exams in CSE courses.

It is important that we get as much feedback on this as possible so that we can make a decision that bests suits all of you.

The survey ends tomorrow (Sunday) at midnight, so please respond as soon as you can!

The survey is available here .

Rob

Lab05, Project Check-ins, Q&A Session Tomorrow

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Thursday 19 March 2020, 09:26:17 PM.

Hi everyone,

A few things have come up that I wanted to make sure everyone in the course knew.

Firstly, there are exercises in lab05 that rely on material not yet covered. This was an oversight when rescheduling the lectures. You're welcome to attempt exercises 4 and 7 if you want, but it's not required to do so to get full marks for the lab. The material will be covered on Tuesday next week. There was also a slight error in exercise 2 relating to the routes you have to implement. I've fixed the issue in the the repo of the lab linked to from the course website, but your individual repos will still contain the error. You will not lose marks for having routes that contain 'names' instead of 'name'.

Perhaps owing to the sudden change to online delivery, there have been a few groups and individuals not present for their project check-ins over the past two days. Please note that these check-ins are part of the assessment and failing to be there for them may result in reductions to your teamwork component of your mark for iteration 2. Also, I would ask that everyone makes sure they read the part of the project spec relating to individual contribution. You'll note it says that failure to attend project check-ins can result in your final project mark being scaled down. We will be lenient for any missed check-ins since Monday, but from now on we will have to treat it more seriously.

Lastly, as noted in my previous announcement, I will be running a Q&A session on Blackboard Collaborate tomorrow (Friday) at 4PM . If you click here closer to the time, you should be able to join in. I want to use it as an opportunity to clear up any issues that may have arisen in the transition to online learning as well as anything else that people want answers to. It's not compulsory at all to join in, but there will be a recording if you want to see how it goes down. I'll also make an announcement containing a summary of anything important comes up.

Rob

message from Hayden

Posted by Andrew Taylor Thursday 19 March 2020, 03:42:40 PM.

Hayden is very sad he can't continue lecturing COMP1531 and asked me to pass on to the class the message below. We are incredibly lucky and grateful that Rob Clifton-Everest is available at very short notice. Everyone please try to help Rob and each other. Andrew Taylor

From Hayden:

Hi everyone,

I apologise for postponing yesterday's lecture.

Over the last couple of days some personal issues have arisen that at this stage mean its not possible for me to continue overseeing COMP1531 for 20T1.

Thankfully, in 19T3 I co-taught this course with Rob Everest and he's available to look after the remainder of the course.

With our transition plan to online in place, I'm sure it will be a smooth and interesting remainder of the term!

I hope everyone stays safe, and I'll talk to you down the line somewhere

Hayden

Change of Staff, 2nd lecture this week

Posted by Robert Clifton-Everest Wednesday 18 March 2020, 09:21:19 PM.

Hi everyone,

I'm Rob. My name may be familiar to you as it appears in various places. I taught this course with Hayden last year and I will now be teaching it again.

Unfortunately, owing to personal reasons, Hayden is not able to continue as lecturer for this course, at least not for the foreseeable future. I've spoken to him, he is in good health, and wishes the very best for all of you.

I know this comes at a time when there are already a lot of changes happening, but I intend to keep the course running as planned, with as few changes as possible. Please bear with me and the rest of the course staff as we adjust to both a new lecturer and the transition to online teaching.

On that note, there will be no lecture tomorrow or Friday . Lectures will resume at the normal time next week. Instead, Friday at 4PM I will run a session on Blackboard Collaborate so I can introduce myself to anyone that happens to be around at that time and familiarise myself with the system. While I will answer any questions that may come up, and the session will be recorded, no new course content will be introduced, so it's not required that you watch it.

Rob

Today's lecture has postponed

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Wednesday 18 March 2020, 11:53:45 AM.

Hi everyone,

Today's lecture will be postponed until tomorrow or Friday. I'll update you when a time is confirmed. If you can't make the new time it's OK because it's recorded. And the content is non-critical too.

Apologies

COVID-19 - Update #3

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Tuesday 17 March 2020, 03:03:03 PM.

Hi everyone,

A summary of our transition online can be found here .

The short answer is that we're going to be using Blackboard collaborate to carry on with lectures, tutorials, labs, project check ins, and demos, as per this schedule .

Further explanations about this will be talked through in the lecture at 4pm, which you can attend live (I am not sure if there are caps on the number of attendees). Click here to attend the lecture at 4pm . After the lecture, a link to the recording will be added to the appropriate row in the Lectures page on Webcms3.

Please assist each other during this transition period.

Any questions as always end up on Piazza.

COVID-19 - Update #2

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 16 March 2020, 09:50:48 PM.

H ieveryone,

Since the last notice, a number of things have happened:

• I've been in conversation with your tutors
• The school has met and developed policies in regards to online teaching
• A critical mass of UNSW have moved courses online

In light of this, COMP1531 will be moving completely online indefinitely for the remainder of the term.

We still have large challenges ahead: Group work courses are arguably the hardest courses to move online, and COMP1531 is one of the biggest courses in the school- definitely the biggest group work course in the school.

A more detailed plan and updated will be posted before 3pm tomorrow.

In the interim, there is an expectation that you are available with stable internet connection during your normal scheduled class hours (tutes/labs). Please keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow with more information.

Update RE: COVID-19

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 16 March 2020, 11:45:45 AM.

Hi everyone,

The situation relating to COVID-19 is escalating quickly at all levels. I'd like to update you on some provisional steps we will be taking this week (at a minimum). This will be the case until further updates are provided.

Lectures and tutorials will still go ahead this week. However, if you feel more comfortable watching lectures remotely, please do so. I will still be in the lecture theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday. If you feel more comfortable skipping your tutorial, please do so as well. I will record my tutorial (or a separate tutorial) and post a recording of that up somewhere later in the week.

For the laboratories, based on current health and university advice, these will still be going ahead this week. At present you are not only required to come to mark your lab off, but due to the likely large number of students dropping the course there will be a number of potential group re-shuffles that are required this week.

I think we're all starting to get the picture that it's very likely before the end of term that UNSW or the Govt may enforce that all courses move completely online. I think that we will be equipped when that point arises to have groups operate online and remotely to complete the projects. We have the technology. However, for that to run smoothly I think it's important that for this week (until further notice) you attend your labs to ensure in case the situation with COVID-19 escalates, you are having good in-person relationships with your current (or quite potentially new) group.

Groups will not be split unless under extreme circumstances. It's more likely abandoned stragglers will be added to your group.

If you are eligible for special consideration due to illness, none of the above applies to you, and you should look after yourself.

Like always, please practice social distancing, don't touch one another, be mindful of your surroundings, and just look our for everyone. It's important that everyone stays calm and vigilant, and most importantly, remember that this is a public health issue, not a likely major personal threat to yourself.

If you have any questions or followups regarding this, please post in piazza.

Help Sessions

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 02 March 2020, 10:48:53 AM.

Hi all,

Information about help sessions can be found here . First help session is today from 4pm-6pm. Locations (and very rarely times) are subject to change, so please check the page frequently just before you head to one.

Team Project Repos, Git Workshop, Course Materials

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Friday 28 February 2020, 11:34:28 AM.

Hi all, updates for you:

Team Project Repos

• All Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday tutorial groups will now have their project repos created. You can find these on the homepage of your gitlab. It looks like gitlab.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1531/20T1/[TutorialCode]-[YourGroupName]
• I had to rename some group names on Webcms3 to be compliant, don't be alarmed, they were minor edits
• Friday tutorials, your repositories will be created at 5pm today, so check back then.

Git Workshop

• CSESoc are hosting a 1 hour git workshop next Tuesday (3rd March) from 12pm-1pm, you should attend!
• I learned git most effectively through learning it from different perspectives, so if you're free you should go along. Either you'll learn something cool beyond the scope of what we teach, or you'll learn the same thing you've been taught from a different perspective.

Course Materials

• Week 3 tutes, lectures, and labs were released last weekend
• Week 4 lectures were released last weekend
• Week 4 tutorial will be released this weekend
• There is no lab in week 4, since you will be demonstrating your iteration 1

A reminder that iteration 1 is due in 10 days! (Monday night, week 4)

Have a great weekend - the weather looks nice, don't forget to go outside and enjoy yourself!

Week 2 + Project

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Sunday 23 February 2020, 10:02:25 PM.

Hi everyone,

Week 2 tutes, labs, and some lectures have been released. Please check the appropriate sections. Week 2 lab will be pushed to your own personal repositories sometime tomorrow. Remember that the main one we link is the course repository, and then we run scripts that creates a copy of that repo into your own /z5555555/ for you to work on.

The project has also been released (or more specifically, iteration 1). Please have a good read of it and we will discuss more in the lecture on Tuesday. If you have questions, please post them on Piazza. You will be able to start working on it once you form groups (see week 2 tutorial). Once your group is formed we will push the code to your group's repository. Again, more of this on on Tuesday!

Hope you've all had an OK weekend and that you're looking after yourselves :)

COVID-19 & Weeks 1-2

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 17 February 2020, 10:16:40 AM.

If you have any concerns, comments, or questions in relation to Coronavirus (COVID-19) we have put together this page that should hopefully assist you. Please read this page prior to contacting any course staff member. It's likely you'll find enough information there.

Welcome to COMP1531 in 20T1

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Sunday 16 February 2020, 12:02:44 PM.

Hi everyone,

Welcome to COMP1531 in 20T1. I hope you've all had a relaxing summer and had a chance to recharge for the year ahead.

For most of you this will be an exciting course. It will be a chance to get neck deep in python, learn the basics of web development, use git to build and maintain something as a team, and just generally start the process of transitioning from being just a programmer to thinking and operating like an engineer who can work with others effectively.

We have a great team of 25 tutors and lab assistants who care about you getting through the course, and we want you to feel supported throughout the next 10 weeks.

Some info to get you started!

• Week 1 lectures are up
• Week 1 tutorials and labs are up
• You can see details about your tutorial and tutor here

This and much more will be covered in the first lecture on Tuesday from 4pm-6pm in CLB 7 .

To all students, you should try and login to Piazza . Your email "z5555555@unsw.edu.au" was invited, so check your email! We won't be using Webcms3 to ask or reply to any questions. All questions will be going through Piazza in this course.

To any web stream students, you are welcome to come along to the lectures in person. The course has 550 students in it (including web stream), and the lecture theatre has 500 seats. Some students will never attend lectures anyway, so there will always be space to come if you choose.

Looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday afternoon!