Pages

Workbooks are the main assignments for class and the required reading. Understanding them is realy important.

In an online class, communication is important. For this class, there are multuiple mechanisms (Canvas, Piazza, Web, Zoom, Email). Student should understand how the class uses all of these mechanisms.

• The course web has course information and content. New material will be announced on Canvas.
• Announcements will be made via Canvas. Make sure you receive Canvas announcements.
• Emergency announcements will be made via email, but we will try to keep this to a minimum.
• General (Open) Discussions via Piazza.
• Communication with Course Staff via Piazza.
• Course restricted information via Canvas pages and Files.
• Grading via Canvas.
• Synchronous class meetings via Zoom. (see Zoom for CS559)
• Consulting hours and office hours will be held in person or via Zoom.
• Workbooks are obtained and handed in via GitHub classroom and a Canvas survey.
• Exams and Surveys will use Canvas Quizzes.
• Please be respectful of others in online communications.

1. There will be 3 exams, given online. Two will be given on Wednesday evenings during the semester, one will be given in the official University Final Examination time slot.
2. Each exam will be administered using Canvas Quizzing.
3. Each exam will consist of 3 short segments. You must complete all 3 segments within the exam time window.

This class is meant to teach you about Computer Graphics. Computer Graphics is the study of how we make pictures with computers. The focus of the class is teaching you the key ideas of computer graphics.

The class will also teach you about how to do interactive graphics programming. We will use web technologies for this. On one hand, doing interactive web programming is a means to an end: you need to program graphics in order to really learn it. But, learning to build interactive applications for the web is a useful skill in its own right.

In CS559 this semester, we will use GitHub as a mechanism for distributing framework code (the starter code for assignments) as well as to have students hand in their assignments.

If you’ve never used Git, some of this might not make sense yet, since we are using Git terminology. See Learning Git and GitHub below for help in getting started.

Learning enough about Git is a requirement for the class. Technically, knowing the basics of Git is a pre-requisite (since it is covered in CS400). However, we will help you learn.

It will be really worth your time to set you computer up for class. The tools you need are discussed at Tools for 559.

Here are some steps that I used to set up a Windows laptop for working on class projects. This can give you a sense of how to get the things on the Tools for 559 page setup on your machine. It will probably be different for you. If you have a Mac or are running Linux, I can’t provide as much help (but other Course Staff can).

The course staff will hold “consulting hours” at the times listed below. We will provide a mixture of in-person and online consulting for students.

A Syllabus may mean different things to different people.

To the University, it is an official document that explains how the class meets some official rules. Officially, that is on AEFIS (since officially, that’s where syllabi are). What you are probably looking for (what I thought a syllabus is):

• If you want a concise description of how the course works, see the Course Overview.
• If you are looking for a schedule of the class, see the Calendar.
• If you are looking for a list of the learning goals, see Learning Goals. This has more detail than the official syllabus.
• If you are looking for the list of course policies, see Policies
• If you want an outline of the topics covered in class, the Calendar has a rough outline. The Lecture Materials: Videos and Slides has a more detailed outline of what we’ve already covered (with links to the lecture videos). Since that only has what we’ve done, you might want to look at last year’s outline (2022 Course Outline with Video Links) - this year will be similar.

We will use Zoom for this class: both to present the synchronous lectures as well as for online meetings with course staff.