Every two weeks (approximately), there will be a series of short questions for you to give brief responses to, about your progress in the course thus far / since the previous milestone.
It should hopefully be a quick and easy thing for you to do, while giving you a chance to think about how you're going in the course and to help you stay on top of things.
The exact questions may change from week to week, but they will stick to two overall themes: keeping track of your overall progress in the course, and "codecraft" -- building up your skills in the craft of programming; working on the quality of design and work shown in something made by hand.
The writeups are intended to be easy for you to answer, and quick for you to write up -- no more than 10-15 minutes every two weeks.
... will be due before your next tutorial. For this milestone, you'll fill in responses to questions about what you want to get out of the course and talk a little bit about how to avoid stress and plagiarism during the term. The reflection should only take 5 or 10 minutes to do -- this is a little bit shorter than reflections will be in the upcoming week, but they follow the exact same idea.
The first reflection asks three questions:
There are more details about what to say for each question in the Blog Template.
To use the Blog Template, see here.
You will be creating your milestone write-ups in your blog, by copying the template for that milestone and filling in the gaps. Your submission will be marked by your tutor during a lab. Reflections don't have late penalties, but we won't mark them if they're all done at the last minute (they don't work if you're not doing them periodically).
If you find that you're struggling to keep up with the course, or you're finding it hard to stay on track, you may find it helpful to keep a more regular journal / to check in more frequently than just the fortnightly milestone write-ups. You can use the "Weekly Blog" template, which has a small list of questions you can complete regularly, to reflect on your learning, and plan your future work.
You may also find it helpful to set small, regular goals to help yourself improve across the semester. We will also provide support for doing this in the optional template mentioned above.
If you find during the milestones that you're struggling to stay on track no matter how hard you're trying -- don't panic, we understand that university can be pretty tough. Thankfully, UNSW have some excellent support services for students to help develop the skills you need to succeed at university: one such resource are the Educational Support Advisors , who can provide you with one-to-one help. You can also email your tutor, or post anonymously on the Course Forum.
UNSW also have a number of self-help resources on study skills and academic skills , which you might also find very helpful.
The purpose of the milestone write-ups are to get you to periodically take a moment to stop and think about how you're going, as we progress through the course. In each write-up, you'll set yourself a goal to work towards for the next milestone; you will also be thinking about and analyzing some of the code that you've written since the last milestone.
As such, we're looking to see that you are thinking about things, you are setting yourself goals, you are thinking critically about your code. We don't expect you to be perfect -- just that you give it a shot, and do your best.
We are not going to assess you based on your spelling, or grammar, or English skills; we care more about your thoughts and ideas than how they are presented.
Similarly, for the "topic progress" section, we aren't assessing whether you've said that you've mastered every skill -- you won't gain or lose any marks for saying that you've mastered something, or saying that you don't understand something.
Self-improvement
Code style and clarity
Code-improvement
Not all of these will be applicable to every milestone, but these are the skills that we hope you will gain over the course of the semester.
Assessments will be done in class. This means you will need to talk to your tutor about the write-up you have done. The marking guide is very simple, and the intent is that every student will get a "Complete" mark in this work:
| Awesome! (3 / 2) |
For this grade, you must have done everything to achieve a "Complete" mark, and then also included some significant extra element of reflection. This could be more regular reflection than once every two weeks, or an additional question you've answered or kept track of, or some additional content you've made (like a vlog!).
|
| Complete (2 / 2) | For this grade, every question (or almost every question) should have an answer that sufficiently responds to the quesiton. We don't care about how long it is, as long as you've provided a genuine response that's novel. Our goal here is to see that you've put thought into this -- not to test your essay writing. |
| Partly Complete (1 / 2) | For this grade, some questions will have answers, or have answers that demonstrate no thought or reflection. |
| Not Done (0 / 2) |
For this grade, either no work was done, or answers were so short that no reflection was evident (for example, a one word answer).
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Completing these reflections are their own reward. The marks are not intended to penalize you, and pretty much every student should get 2/2
Resource created Tuesday 09 February 2021, 03:18:20 PM, last modified Monday 15 February 2021, 05:48:28 PM.