Teaching

Professor Jinzhong Niu @ Guttman Community College, CUNY

INFT 221: Web Technologies and Multimedia

Things to do first

  1. Read the syllabus.
  2. Install Microsoft Teams if you haven’t,
    log in using your CUNY login credential (ending with @login.cuny.edu), and
    join the class team in Microsoft Team using the code “x6bdeer”.
  3. Explore in Teams and get familiar with its features if you never used it before.
  4. Visit the course on Blackboard and get familiar with the navigation menu and features.
  5. If you don’t have a Windows, Mac, or Linux computer, you need to borrow a long-term loaner laptop from the college. A chromebook cannot support what we need to do in this course.

Table of Contents

Academic support

Detailed information about academic support services is not available as of writing, but will be shared once it becomes available.

Expectations

Planning and schedule

  1. At the beginning of every week, I would send an email to give you a general idea about the plan for the week — the topics we cover, work expected, assignments due as well as other arrangements and notices. You should read the email carefully and entirely.
  2. With distance learning, you will take your own pace to study, but you are expected to first read and understand learning materials (textbook, video lectures, tutorials, articles, etc.), then try to answer provided guiding questions if there is any to evaluate your learning, and finally work on assignments. The process could be iterative, meaning that when you are already working on assignments, you may need to, for example, go back to review certain learning materials to deepen your understandings so as to complete the assignments. You yourself decide how much time you spend on different things or steps of the process. You should NOT skip learning materials and guiding questions, and attempt to work on assignments directly. Assignments are used to evaluate your learning and should NOT be the start of your learning process.

Support and communication

  1. Distance learning doesn’t mean that you are left on your own. There are resources available to help you, such as IT tutors and Peer Mentors. Although we do not have direct, fast interactions like we had in person in a classroom, you can still email me for help, join online Q/A sessions in MS Teams, and/or make appointments on starfish to meet with me during my virtual office hours. Check the syllabus for details. Email communication takes time. I usually respond to emails very quickly, sometimes within minutes or seconds, but more often than not I may be busy with other duties or working on other students’ requests. It’s not wise to wait in front of your computer, expecting an answer. You are always encouraged to continue to explore for an answer by yourself, which is a very important goal of higher education. To make our email communication more efficient, please DO NOT email without a subject line, or with a generic subject line saying “Important”, or simply say “I need help with assignment 2.” in the email body. Instead, you should write a specific, informative subject line, such as “inft211 - assignment 2 - issue with posting loom video”, and include detailed information in the email body. That way, I can easily understand what specific help is in need and respond effectively. In addition to detailed descriptions in the email body, if applicable, you should use screenshots or even a video recording to demonstrate the problem you run into. Note that video recordings, and large screen shots, should NOT be attached to emails directly. Instead, upload them to some cloud storage or website and generate shareable links to put into your email. Further more, you should write your email in a professional way and show respect. An email that abruptly says “Hi, I need help with posting loom video recording to Blackboard.” is NOT professional and NOT acceptable. Below is a beautiful note I received from a student before and I appreciate the professionalism: A beautifully written email This note is very informative, specific, structured well, and polite. I encourage you all to follow this good example. Finally, I’d like to stress that online Q/A sessions and office hours are probably the only opportunities for us to communicate directly. I urge you to make full use of these resources.

Late work and extension

  1. As stated clearly in the syllabus, “Late submission, unless an extension is granted in advance, will not be graded.” Extensions are typically granted due to illnesses and emergencies. Although I understand that people sometimes experience obstacles and distractions, you are still expected to spend sufficient time on course work, as much as you need. Please plan ahead, manage your time wisely, and complete submission on time.
  2. If you receive an extension, it’s your responsibility to notify me after you submit your work. Your grade will then be updated afterwards.
  3. If you are making a late submission with permission but the normal submission venue is closed, you should email your work to me. If large images or video recordings are involved, upload them to a cloud storage, create shareable links, and send me the links only.
  4. Submission of late work by email without granted extension in advance will be deleted and disregarded without further notice.
  5. If you have to miss a lot of course work due to whatever reasons including medical conditions, you may want to consider withdrawal and taking the class at another time. I try our best to accommodate your need and make special arrangements, however please note that it’s your responsibility to catch up and get back on track and that the academic expectations in terms of submitted work and exams are still the same. I urge you to reach out early to discuss your situation.

Plagiarism and academic honesty

  1. No doubt that plagiarism is a serious issue; needless to say, you should NOT do it. Unfortunately, I have to tell that it happens often, especially in Programming and Networking classes. We encourage students to discuss with and help each other, but some people may not know clearly what is allowed and what is not. If you are one of them, I suggest you to watch the following video by a Stanford CS Professor talking about Stanford Honor Code:
    https://youtu.be/KkMDCCdjyW8?t=2056
    We at Guttman hold the same standard.
  2. Any piece of code or work that is eventually submitted for credits should never be shared by two or more people by any means. Scenarios like one sending a Java source code file to others, one showing partially or totally completed work to others through shared screen in Zoom or MS Teams, one telling others what the correct answer to a multiple-choice question is, one googling and downloading work posted by others from the Internet for submission are all plagiarism.
  3. There are scenarios that we do not consider plagiarism, such as multiple people discussing a question and drawing the conclusion for example that the program should use a for loop, one person who already completed work telling another that it’s not correct to use a boolean variable to save an integer value. We encourage you to work together in ways like these so that all of you actually learn from each other.
  4. Trailing far behind others can bring a lot of pressure on you, especially for people who are just a few steps away from graduation. My advice is that you should avoid being trapped in that situation by working hard from the beginning and reaching out for help early.
  5. When you communicate with me for help on your assignments, please do NOT expect me to provide the correct answer directly to you. What I typically do instead would be giving you some tips or reminders or even ask you some guiding questions so that you can find mistakes and make corrections by yourself, thus essentially learning. I strongly believe that it’s crucial for students to learn how to fish for a lifetime rather than being given a fish to make through a day.

I hope these expectations can help clarify things and make both teaching and learning more effective. I believe eventually you will benefit from our policies, learn, and grow stronger academically. Your success is very important to me. Please remember that your professor is always here for you.

GSACS

Documentation

Surveys

Media release

Signature project

Course plan

Session 1 (Thursday, 3/9)

Session 2 (Thursday, 3/16)

Session 3 (Thursday, 3/23)

Session 4 (Thursday, 3/30)

Session 5 (Thursday, 4/20)

Session 6 (Thursday, 4/27)

Session 7 (Thursday, 5/4)

Session 8 (Thursday, 5/11)

Session 9 (Thursday, 5/18)

  • Learning materials
  • Activities
    • Assignment 11 (in-class): responsive enhancement of implementation of Assignment 9
    • Review of peers’ work on Assignment 11

Session 10 (Thursday, 5/25)

Session 11 (Thursday, 6/1)

Session 12 (Thursday, 6/8)

Required tools

Additional tools and resources