Resources and Information for CS 138 ISAs

This TWiki is for technical details only. Any other duty information can be found in Waterloo LEARN (D2L): CS Instructional Support Group -> Course Admin & Duties for ISAs.

Key Links

• Marmoset
• PrintingMarmosetAssignments
• PiazzaTips
• Moss: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/ISG/MossBasics
• Download Marmoset Results and other marm-sql commands: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/ISG/MarmSql
• Instructions for copying submissions from Marmoset into Markus, under "Courses where students do NOT submit on MarkUs " (This is for hand-marking): MarkUsPrepareForMarking
• The modified parts for cs138 marm_sql script is commented in /u2/cs138/bin/marm_sql
• Connect remotely: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/ISG/SambaWindows

Timeline

Week 0-2:

• Meet your colleagues.
• Enter the course account and familiarize yourself with the locations of files, the directory structure, and all the HTML files under public_html.
• Complete the training required by the University of Waterloo.
• Attend the ISA training sessions, especially the ones on Linux, course accounts, and Marmoset.
• View manual.txt in the course account under the useful_info folder to get familiar with your work.
• Attend the lectures and give feedback about the lectures to the instructor.
• Prepare for the tutorials.
• Set up and release the first assignment(s). Details are in the "Assignments" section below.
• Monitor and answer questions on Piazza and the course email.
• Hold office hours and tutorials.
• When an assignment is due, update the marks and run MOSS. Details are in the "Assignments" and "MOSS" sections below.

Throughout the Term

• Continuously check the course email and reply to any pertinent emails. Typically, the order of importance is course staff > student emails.
• Regularly check Piazza and answer student questions.
• Attend the lectures and prepare for the tutorials.
• Hold office hours and tutorials.
• Read through the assignment specifications and make any necessary fixes on the PDF before assignments are released.
• Release new assignments when the time comes.
• When an assignment is due, update the marks and run MOSS on student submissions.

Midterm & Final

• On the exam day, arrive at the ISC's office at the specified time for instructions on proctoring the exam.
• Proctor the exams.
• Attend the marking meeting and mark the exams.

• Post an announcement on Piazza when midterm marks are released. Include information about midterm remark requests.
• Handle midterm remark requests as instructed by the ISC.

Course Directory Structures

Most directories contain a README.txt with details pertinent to their specific contents/function.

• Course Account (cs138@linux.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca)
  • useful_info: Contains useful instructions, such as ssh.txt, first_time_setup.txt, dailyTasks.txt, weeklyTasks.txt, etc.
  • archives: Contains backups of previous terms.
  • bin: Contains scripts used by other scripts.
  • marks: For downloading and compiling assignment marks.
  • moss: Workspace for downloading student submissions and running MOSS.
  • public_html: Contains the contents of the course website.
• Testing Account (cs138t@linux.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca)
  • marmoset: Contains folders for assignment test setups and canonical solutions to be uploaded to Marmoset.

Assignments

First Time Setup

• Clone the staff git repo to your personal account.
• In the testing account, copy over the last term's folder (e.g. w24) and rename it after the current term.
• Update the term/year information on ~/public_html/cgi-bin/displayMarks.py in the course account. This script is used to display the unofficial marks on the course website.

Setup For Each Assignment

• Create a directory for the assignment. It is recommended to separate the contents into at least the three following sub-directories:
  • Description: The LaTeX and other files (such as images) for creating/editing the assignment PDF.
  • skeleton: The skeleton files for the assignment.
  • solution: Solution files for the assignments.
• Copy over the assignment files from the previous offering's files.
• Modify the year and the due dates for the assignment in the LaTeX file.
• Read through the specifications carefully with the instructor and modify them if necessary.
  • Attempt to do the assignment yourself before releasing it. This helps you identify which specifications require further clarification.
• To compile the LaTeX file into a PDF, run pdflatex <.tex-file-name>.

Marmoset Setup

The details can be found on ~/marmoset/README.txt in the testing account.

• In the current term's folder, navigate to the directory for the current assignment. Within each project folder, there should be at least a directory named "test" for the test setup, and another named "sol" for the solution files.
  • For projects that use standard input/output, you may need to generate the *.out, *err, and *.expected files by running ./maketests in the test/code directory.
• Update the test setup if necessary. The instructions are provided in ~/marmoset/README.txt.
• Run ~/marmoset/bin/runtest <solution-directory> to test the solution files for correctness and generate the zip files.
• On Marmoset, create a new project for each part of the assignment.
• Upload the test setup and the canonical solution to each project. Assign points to activate the test setup.

Releasing the Assignment

• Create an empty git project in the student skeleton group, and clone the repo to your personal account somewhere else.
• Copy over the skeleton files and the PDF.
• Commit the changes and push the commit to the remote repo. Students should be able to see and pull the assignment files now.
• Change the Marmoset projects' visibility to "Visible to Students". Marmoset projects should now be available for the students to see and submit their solutions.
• Post an announcement on Piazza and/or LEARN about the newly released assignment.

After the Deadline

• Grant any extensions for students on Marmoset as notified to you by the ISC.
• After the deadline passes for all students (including those given extensions), change the test-outcome visibility of each assignment project to "Everything".
• Inside the directory ~/marks/download in the course account, run ~/bin/marm_sql -v -m <assignment> to download the marks for the assignment.
• Edit the script combine.bash as necessary. Then, run ./combine.bash > public-marks.txt to calculate the marks and compile them into a single file.
• Double-check that the marks have been compiled correctly; change the marks manually for instances like remark requests if necessary.
  • Document all the remark requests in a single text file.
• When ready to publish, copy public-marks.txt to the parent directory (i.e. ~/marks). Students should now be able to see their marks on the Unofficial Marks page.
• Download the student submissions from Marmoset and run MOSS as explained in the section below.

MOSS

The instructions can also be found on ~/useful_info/manual.txt in the course account.

• Create a directory for each assignment project in ~/moss. You may want to create directories for each assignment first, then create sub-directories for each project.
• cd into each project directory, then run ~/bin/marm_sql -v -d <project-name>. This will download all student submissions for the project in a new sub-directory with the project name.
  • You can also download the submissions from the Marmoset web interface.
• Run yes O | /u/isg/bin/runMoss -d <path-to-submission-directory> '-l ascii' to run MOSS on the submissions. This will generate a sub-directory named html with HTML pages of MOSS results.
  • Note that the O after yes is the capital letter O, not zero.
  • You may want to replace ascii with cc in the command to run MOSS with C++ language.
• To generate a more readable results page, run cd html then u/isg/bin/moss_makereadable index.html 10 > readable.html.
• Open the readable.html file and manually inspect the submissions with high match percentages.
• Compile a list of submissions you think are suspicious, then follow the instructions from your ISC.

Others

Please see the folder ~/useful_info for more details on the course.

Non-Technical (To be moved to D2L)

Outdated

No Longer Relevant

<As CS138 makes use of Marmoset for testing but also requires some hand marking from TAs, it's worth checking PrintingMarmosetAssignments for scripts that will help accomplish this.>