This page provides links to course tools and educational technology aimed at getting your course up and running quickly. It is targeted toward Faculty and TAs from CSE who need quick and simple directions for accomplishing common tasks.

Go to dashboard

CSE Instructor Dashboard

Your dashboard contains quick, concise "one-stop shopping" info and links specific to the course you are currently teaching or preparing to teach. (TA info, class enrollment, course directories, mailing lists, webs & wikis, groups, and more). We encourage you to first peruse your dashboard before venturing further. You can locate your current quarter dashboard by appending '/admin' to the top-level course URL ie: https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse333/admin . Much of the information on the rest of *this* page is referenced or duplicated within your dashboard but with course-specific links. The sections below contain more generalized but in some cases additional "deep-dive" information.

[+] Homework, Grading, & Grade Submission

[-] Webs, Wikis, & More

    Course websites

    • All courses in the Allen school have their own webs. Course web addresses are located at http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/{CSE course number}/{quarter identifier}/. Course web files are located in in the file system at /cse/web/courses/{CSE course number}/{quarter identifier}/ (ie. .../cse142/12au). The course web directory is writable by members of the instructional course group (course instructor and course TAs). We (support) populate those groups prior to the beginning of each quarter based on TA database info and instructor info in the time schedule.
    • Instructors have "instructional" accounts, which means that they have accounts on machines that have access to /cse/web/courses/.
    • Staff will create two special subdirectories in your course web directory: csenetid/ and uwnetid/. Content that you place in these directories will be accessible only to users with a CSE or UW account, respectively. If you have content that you don't wish to be indexed by search engines, place it in one of these directories. The auth policies are established server-side.
    • An instructional machine called cubist.cs is available for classes that require the use of a web server for student content creation and/or Unix database use. Details are here.
    • A course web template is available for use here
    • If you plan to host your course website somewhere else (e.g. Google Sites), you can add a redirect from the default course directory to where your site is hosted. There are two options for doing so:
      1. Go to your course web directory at /cse/web/courses/{coursenumber}/{quarter}. Create a file named .htaccess and add to it the following line, filling in the appropriate URL for your site:
        RedirectMatch 301 / https://your-course-site.com
      2. Send an email to support@cs requesting that we set up the redirect, providing your course number and the URL of the page you'd like to redirect to.

    Calendars

    • Your course HTML calendar is at http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/{CSE course number}/{quarter identifier}/calendar/calendar.html. (Exception: if your course doesn't have a scheduled time, location, or instructor, no calendar has been created.)
    • Course calendar files are in /cse/web/courses/{CSE course number}/{quarter identifier}/calendar/ and its subdirectories. Documentation on how to update the calendar is here. The command createcal -man on any standard CSE Linux system provides a summary.
    • A shared Google calendar is used to help instructors coordinate mid-term exams to avoid “mid-term storms” for our students. The idea is simple:
      • Subscribe to the calendar at the beginning of the term. Use your CSE Google account to do it. Staff will ensure that all instructors for the current term are authorized to do so.
      • Before scheduling a mid-term, check the calendar to see what other mid-terms have been scheduled. When you settle on a date for your mid-term, create an entry in the calendar with the course number as the event title.
      • Use of the exam calendar is entirely optional, and is most useful for undergraduate CSE3XX and (to a lesser extent) CSE4XX courses. If you have trouble subscribing, please contact support@cs.

    Course feedback

    • You can get valuable feedback (and probably some raw flames) from your students by pointing them to the anonymous feedback tool where they can submit feedback for any courses they're enrolled in.

    Wikis

    • Some courses (and research projects) use MediaWiki to facilitate collaboration. See Using MediaWiki at CSE for details.
    • CourseLore wiki is a place for course instructors to develop a persistent trove of "course lore"— what worked and failed to work, what resources were used, et cetera. Access is restricted to members of the CSE groups fac_cs, instruct, and tas (plus staff), so it is a suitable forum for frank discussion amongst peers.
    • Education wiki is a place for general instructional content. Access is restricted to any user that has a UW account— including faculty, staff, and students.

    Blogs

    Ed Discussion

    • Ed Discussion boards can be provisioned for your course by request to support@cs.washington.edu. This is the preferred discussion platform for course discussion, as it is FERPA-compliant and can be easily synced with official UW enrollments. Please note that an additional, separate Ed Discussion Board can be set up for course staff-only communication for grading correspondence, etc.

    Mailing lists

    Please visit UW-IT Connect's page, Mailman Email List Manager, for detailed information on UW Mailman.

    Quick Set-up:

    If you are an instructor of record:

    • Browse to MyUW
    • Select the 'Teaching' tab.
    • Look for your course in the 'My Class Resources' section. (You may need to select a future quarter if you visit before the start of the term.) This will open a new page.
    • Click on 'Request class email list.' This submits a request for the mailing list that will be provisioned overnight. You will receive an email to that effect. The list will be populated with enrollment data available at the time of creation and will reflect ongoing changes to enrollment.

    If you are a TA or other member of course staff:


    Non-major Accounts

    • Provisioning of class accounts for non-majors are approved by CSE Advising. Please make requests to ugrad-advisor@cs.washington.edu.
    • Inquiring non-majors should recieve an account welcome email no earlier than the end of the first week of the quarter. If the account welcome has not arrived by the beginning of the second week of the quarter, they are welcome to send a request to support@cs.

Related links

  • The Allen School offers GitLab as a service. Detailed instructions can be found here.
    • Bulk provisioning tools for Course Staff to setup repositories can be found here.
    • Please contact support@cs if you require assistance with the GitLab provisioning tools.
  • The Allen School publishes many of its courses on the internet.
  • A number of cloud-based educational technology resources are available, from both Amazon and Microsoft.
  • Microsoft Azure Dev Tools for Teaching Program
    • The Microsoft "Azure Dev Tools for Teaching" Program is open to any student enrolled in a UW CSE course, including intro classes.
    • Access is available to any student registered in a CSE course for the current quarter based on enrollment. Students can be directed to log in with their UW credentials.
  • VMWare Academic Program (VMAP)
    • VMAP is open to any UW faculty, staff and student on the UW Seattle campus. VMAP provides access to download time limited versions of most VMWare products.
    • Students can log in with their UW credentials.
  • Need to change a grade? Armed with the student name and number, course number, and section, instructors can now do that with the Online Grade Change Form.

Quick Links