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 Dashboards

Your CSE Instructor Dashboard offers a quick and convenient "one-stop shopping" location where you can view course-specific information and links, including:

  • TA info
  • Class Enrollments
  • Course Directories
  • Course Communication
  • Mailing Lists
  • Wikis
  • Groups
  • ...and more!
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You can access your current quarter dashboard by appending your course number to the top-level URL: https://education.cs.washington.edu/dashboard?course=cse### (e.g., https://education.cs.washington.edu/dashboard?course=cse333).

While much of the information found on *this* webpage is also reflected on your dashboard, your dashboard includes course-specific links designed to make the information even more relevant and practical for your use.

Below, you'll find more generalized information and details about commonly used course resources, tools, and technologies supported by the CS Lab.

Academic Integrity:

Academic integrity in student work is critical to all aspects of effective teaching and learning in CSE courses. The Allen School’s student-facing principles, policies, and procedures related to Academic Misconduct can be found here.

Tech and Tools for Managing Student Work, Assignments & Grading:

CSE Gitlab (Projects & Assignments)

The Allen School offers a locally run instance of Gitlab that can be used by CSE instructors and students for elements of course delivery and assignments that require git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds, wikis and more. Broader details on CSE Gitlab can be found here.

CSE Gitlab Bulk Tools 

The CS Lab’s Web Data Group supports a set of “GitLab Bulk Tools”, developed to make it easier and more efficient for instructors to perform certain operations in CSE Gitlab that can otherwise be tedious to perform through a regular web interface. These Tools:

        • Enable Course Staff to quickly and easily create repositories for students/student groups.
        • Enable Gitlab project owners to quickly and easily assign permissions to a large number of people.
        • Enable Lab Staff (upon request) to create a gitlab account for every enrolled student in a given course.

**Note: All of the above operations will automatically create gitlab accounts for those who do not already have one.

(Link to README describing the Tools and Operations - note CSE auth required to view)

Lab Managed Gitlab-CI Runners

By request (only) to support@cs, the CS Lab can provide Gitlab-CI compute cycles that can be used for instructional delivery via dedicated machines loaded with the Gitlab Runner software and the Docker Engine.


Gradescope (Quizzes, Assignments, & Grading) 

Assignments:

Gradescope has become one of CSE’s most popular tools to manage the creation and submission of various types of student work.  

Supported assignment types include:

Supported formats:

Assignments originally created in either of these two formats can be uploaded by either instructors or students themselves

CSE Gitlab Integration with Gradescope: 

CSE Gitlab can be integrated with Gradescope to allow students to submit work through their Gitlab repos. Since this method of submission is a custom option for CSE courses rather than a Gradescope default, Gitlab integration must be set up on a course-by-course basis after your Gradescope course has been created.  Please follow these steps:

      1. Create your Gradescope course or request creation of a course via email to course-computing@cs
      2. Modify this URL: https://www.gradescope.com/courses/<unique ID here>/gitlab/new, with the unique course ID found in the relevant Gradescope course URL
      3. You’ll be redirected to a “Set up Gitlab integration” page that looks like this:

          4. Follow the instructions for Set-up on that page / screen cap. Instructions also converted to text below:

To enable submission of programming assignments via Gitlab:

            • Log in to your institution’s Gitlab installation
            • Go to Profile Settings by clicking on the icon in the top right
            • Under the ‘Applications’ tab, fill out the form ‘ Add New Application’
            • For the Application Name, use something like ‘Gradescope for CSE <nnn> - <yr/qtr>’. This will be shown to students when authenticating.
            • Use the following Redirect URI parameter: https://www.gradescope.com/courses/<your course ID>/gitlab/oauth/complete
            • After creating the Application on Gitlab, enter the Application ID, secret, and (CSE’s base) Gitlab URL (https://gitlab.cs.washington.edu) below

(Fill in correlating Form Fields listed below these instructions)

            • Click “Submit” Button

   5.After the integration has been successfully set-up, a “Gitlab” Button will appear directly under the “Drag & Drop” field in the “Submit Programming Assignment” window



Grading Student Work with Gradescope:

Gradescope offers a number of robust and flexible online grading features that allow Instructors and TAs to work efficiently and accurately as a team to score, annotate, and publish results back to students.

Advanced Grading features available with UW licensing include (but are not limited to):

UW Canvas LTI Integration with Gradescope:

        • Easily link your Gradescope course with your UW Canvas course (or create your Gradescope course through your Canvas course) via UW Canvas LTI integration with Gradescope
        • Manage your course roster through Gradescope’s “Sync with Canvas” button in Roster Settings
        • Easily push students' scores from Gradescope to Canvas gradebook

For additional information and details about Gradescope licensing and use in CSE courses, visit our dedicated Gradescope Info & Resource page.


Google Forms (Assignment Submission & Management)

Student Assignments:

Google Forms can also be used a solid option for homework submission. 

Instructors can create custom Forms that:

        • Support file attachments
        • Automatically attach timestamps to Student Submissions
        • Can be securely stored in Google Drive
        • Automatically organize responses in Google Sheets, which can be exported to CSV or Excel for easy tracking, grading, and scripting. 

The CS Lab has adapted and published a Python retrieval script for generalized use, originally authored by Dan Grossman for use in his Fall 2017 offering of CSE 341. This script and references are published here.


Final Course Grades

GradePage (Submit Final Grades to the UW Registrar)

GradePage is the University of Washington’s official online grade submission tool for posting final grades each quarter. It has now fully taken the place of Catalyst Gradebook which was retired in 2022.


Online Grade Change Form (for Final Grade Changes AFTER Grading Period has Ended):

Need to change a final grade but the official grading period for the quarter has ended? Armed with the student name and number, course number, and section, instructors can now efficiently do so with the Online Grade Change Form.


Tech and Tools for Managing Course Content Delivery, Logistics, and Communicatoin

CSE Course Websites

All courses in the Allen school have their own websites for organizing course content and supporting course delivery. 

Preliminary CSE Support Set-up:

        • Course web addresses are located at http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/{CSE course number}/{quarter identifier}/. Course web files are located in the file system at /cse/web/courses/{CSE course number}/{quarter identifier}/ (ie. .../cse121/23au). 
        • The course web directory is writable by members of the instructional course group (course instructor and course TAs). 
        • The CS Lab/Support will populate those groups prior to the beginning of each quarter based on TA database info and instructor info as posted in the Time Schedule.
        • Instructors are given "instructional" accounts, which means that they have accounts on machines that have access to /cse/web/courses/.
        • Staff will also create two special subdirectories in your course web directory: csenetid/ and uwnetid/.

Additional Instructor Set-up:

        • Any course content you add that should only be accessed by users with a CSE or UW account, respectively, should be placed in the appropriate, aforementioned subdirectories.
        • 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, UW Canvas, etc), please add a redirect from the default course directory to where your site is hosted because the default directory is linked to from various places and we want the world to know your course exists. 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

Course Calendars: 

HTML course calendars will be created for CSE courses that have a scheduled time, location, and instructor.

Access and Set-up:

        • Your course HTML calendar can be accessed 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 will be 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.

Shared CSE Instructional Exam Calendar:

As the name quite obviously suggests, midterm exams are delivered some time around the midpoint of the quarter (though not all instructors choose to administer them).  Unlike final exams, which are usually, strictly scheduled during a designated “finals” week, instructors have some amount of freedom to schedule midterms over the course of a few weeks, depending on your unique teaching schedule and preferences.

To help CSE instructors avoid “mid-term storms” for our students, a shared Google calendar can be used to help coordinate mid-term exams across CSE courses.

Access:

        • 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 midterms 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 may be most useful for undergraduate CSE3XX and (to a lesser extent) CSE4XX courses. 

If you have trouble subscribing, please contact support@cs

Wikis

Some courses (and research projects) use MediaWiki to facilitate collaboration. See Using MediaWiki at CSE for details.

Existing Wikis of Instructional Relevance:

        • 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

Some CSE courses are using WordPress, an open-source blogging platform, for their course blogs. Contact support@cs. For more information or help getting started.

Non-major Accounts

When necessary to provide an equitable course experience for non-CSE students who have petitioned into majors-only courses, temporary CSE accounts can be approved by CSE Advising and subsequently provisioned as part of course computing preparations by the CS Lab. 

      • Please make requests to ugrad-advisor@cs.washington.edu.
      • Inquiring non-majors should receive 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.
      • Non-major students who are enrolled in a majors-only course for which they have been granted a temporary CSE account, will also receive cardkey access to any dedicated lab spaces that course may be using that quarter


Course Communication:

Ed Discussion

Ed Discussion is the CS Lab’s recommended and supported platform for course communication of various types. It provides instructors with many options to customize boards for their course needs, a user-friendly interface. and Ed rosters can be easily synced with official UW student enrollments. Alongside its flexible features and functional benefits, the UW's enterprise licensing agreement with Ed Discussion ensures that all necessary terms and security and privacy protections, including FERPA-compliance, are in place with the vendor. You'll find more comprehensive info on the CS Lab's dedicated Ed Discussion page, but we've included a few key notes here to get you started:  

CSE Support Set-up:

Allowing CSE Support to create your Ed Discussion board for you ensures that your course will be added to our internal CSE auto-sync, which makes managing your student roster in Ed extra easy, secure, and reliable.

          • An Ed Discussion board will be provisioned for your course when requested through the Call for Course Computing
          • Alternatively, you can send an email to support@cs.washingon.edu to request this resource at any time throughout the quarter

Instructor Self Set-up:

Instructors do have the option to create Ed Discussions board through UW Canvas LTI integration, but there are some caveats you should be aware of before doing so:

          • Unless you explicitly ask us to do so, your board will not be added to the CSE Internal roster sync, which is something we set-up automatically with all CSE Support-provisioned boards. The CSE internal sync is more reliable than Ed’s built-in “Sync with LMS” button.
          • Cross-listed or jointly offered courses that have not been combined successfully in UW Canvas, may encounter issues with student rosters and access
          • Quiz section (Tutorial Group) data will not be populated using this method, which can be problematic for courses which rely on this data for certain discussions or other activities in Ed.

Staff-Only Course Discussion Boards:

Upon your request, a second Ed Discussion Board can be set up for separate staff communication related to grading, and other instructional or sensitive topics that require confidentiality within your Teaching Team. Please note that Instructors do not have the ability to create this Ed Discussion board type themselves.


Course Mailing lists

Please visit the UW-ITConnect webpage, 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:


Cloud Computing Resources for Courses:

A number of cloud-based educational technology resources are available from both Amazon and Microsoft.  The CS Lab is currently exploring additional options for instructors and students who might uniquely benefit from access to free credits or sponsored cloud compute.


Quick Links to Other Related CSE Resources:


UW-IT and UW ASA Centrally-Supported Tech and Tools for Teaching:

UW-IT Teaching & Learning Technologies:

UW Academic Technologies Classroom Support

 

If you have questions or would like more information about anything on this page, please email course-computing@cs or support@cs.