Resources and Information for CS 231 IAs

This twiki is for technical details only.

WIP: The "Key Links" and "Course Webpage and Piazza" sections are currently just copied from CS234 and are for my reference as I build this page. They can be ignored for now.

Key Links

• Assignment Procedure - An overview of posting, collecting, and marking assignments, with links to more detailed pages where appropriate.
• Automated Autotest Creation - Descriptions of the two scripts used to make the directories required for autotests.
• Python-Specific Information for BitterSuite - Detailed information on writing python autotests, including how to handle file/keyboard/screen I/O.
• MossScripts - Instructions for running moss - NEEDS UPDATES
• markus.py information - If autotest.sh is having issues.

Course Webpage and Piazza

• Uploading Marks to the Webpage
• Tips for Piazza

Getting on the Course Account

• If you haven't already, generate a public/private key pair following the first part of this tutorial. Make sure you do this from your linux.student.cs account, or that you then copy the keys to that account.
• Ask your ISC to add you to the .rhosts file on the course account. You should be able to ssh in using ssh cs231@linux.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca (or cs231@localhost if you are already on linux.student.cs) an hour or two after they add you.

Course Webpage Management

For the most part you should only need to update things at the start of the term; there are only a few small tasks to do otherwise. You may find the Managing the Course Webpage page helpful; it covers some basic facts about the web setup. The rest of this section contains information more specific to CS 231.

At the start of the term:

• ~cs231/public_html/python/ should contain all resources relating to Python, such as python session solutions, style guides, provided code files, etc. These files are generally linked from ~/public_html/python.shtml.
• ~cs231/public_html/resources/ should contain other resources. These are generally linked from ~/public_html/resources.shtml.
• ~cs231/public_html/assignments/ should contain the assignments (you can add these later if they aren't all ready yet). These are generally linked from ~/public_html/assignments.shtml. At the start of the term these links should be commented out and the assignments should not be world-readable. As assignments are released you can enable the links and make the assignments world-readable.
• All solution links in ~cs231/public_html/protect/requestAssignSolnCommon.php should be commented out. Solution links are near the bottom of the script and look like: 'cs231a1solns' => 'Assignment 1 Solutions.'
• All solutions should be deleted from ~cs231/protectPDF/
• The personnel information should be updated in ~cs231/public_html/contact.shtml

• Assignments will need to be enabled in the way described above as they are released.
• Solutions need to be enabled at the appropriate times by enabling their links in ~cs231/public_html/protect/requestAssgnSolnCommon.php and by putting them in ~cs231/protectPDF/ as described in ~cs231/protectPDF/README.txt.
• Make any other edits requested by your instructor.

TA Management

As an IA, you're generally responsible for coordinating TA duties during the term. TAs in this course are responsible for marking the assignments (both written solutions and code), and for proctoring the midterm and final exams.

At the start of the term:

• Ask your ISC for a list of TAs and their contact information. Make sure you have their UW emails; official course emails may contain confidental information and need to go through UW's mail system.
• Contact the TAs informing them of their duties and a rough schedule of when they will be expected to do work during the term. You may wish to get a list of times they are generally free to make scheduling marking meetings easier. If you know all the assignment due dates in advance, you can even go so far as to schedule all of the marking meetings here and only change them if assignment deadlines change for some reason.
• Ask any TAs if they are new to marking on MarkUs. If there are some, you should walk them through it during the first marking meeting.

• Organize a marking meeting around a week or so before the assignment is due, to take place a day or two after it is due. Use this meeting to go over the marking scheme, mark a sample assignment for them, and explain your expectations for how detailed their feedback should be, the due date, etc.
• After each marking meeting, send a reminder of what you talked about during the marking meeting, especially key information like due dates.
• Encourage TAs to make their annotations usable to other TAs if they think they'll be useful, and to ask any questions on an email thread with everyone CCed so that clarifications are made to all TAs at once.
• Set due dates a bit earlier than you really need the assignment back so that you have a bit of flexibility if someone is late. Make sure you give TAs at least a week to finish their marking.
• Your ISC should handle midterm/final exam coordination, so you don't need to worry about this.

Start of Term Tasks

• Upload all students in the classlist (~cs231/.classlist) to Piazza. You should do this daily until the end of the add period. You can get everyone's emails by running the following pipeline from the cs231 home directory: tail -n +6 .classlist | cut -d: -f2 | cut -c1-8 | sed 's/$/@uwaterloo.ca/'
• Upload the classlist (.classlist file) to MarkUs. Once again, this should be done regularly until the add period ends.

MarkUs automarking setup

• After the due date, navigate to the submissions tab in the assignment and click "Collect All Submissions - Mark submissions that were in the student's folder as of the due date".
• Navigate to "~cs231/handin" and run "bin/autotest.sh <assignment name>", given the assignment name on MarkUs (e.g. A1), which should also be the assignment name in ~cs231/marking. There should be a directory called ~cs231/marking/<assignment name>_autotest, which should probably just be a symlink to the ~cs231/marking/<assignment name> directory.
• After a minute or two the script should have done everything. Check a few students to make sure they have a file called OUTPUT.txt on MarkUs which contains their public and secret test results. The TAs will need to enter those results manually.