FAQ - The Whys?

These aren’t really frequently asked questions; they are questions that I expect/want students to ask about why the class works the way that it does.

I want to explain the philosophy behind the design of the class. As a student, you might not care. But if you understand why this class is the way that it is, you should be better able to understand how the class works.

I have put this into a “FAQ” form to make it a little easier to organize.

Why is this class the way it is?

I want to explain things. If you understand why I designed the class the way that I have, it will hopefully make sense.

Why is this class online?

I am teaching this class online because I believe that if done correctly, the online format can actually be better than the traditional (lecture style) way the class is taught.

I am going to be very open here about the “if done correctly” - because this class is an experiment to see if I can achieve this. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, learning, and thinking. Now I have to put that into practice.

Indeed, if the learning experience is “no worse” than the traditional lectures, we still come out ahead. Online has advantages (mainly that it provides flexibility to students for when and where they learn).

The traditional big lecture halls on campus are terrible enough that it isn’t that hard for the online experience to beat it.

Over the past few years, it seemed that most students were treating the class as if it were online (even in person) by watching recordings of lectures. This is not an ideal learning experience. If students are going to learn online, I’d like to design the class to provide a proper online experience, which, I believe, can actually be better.

Full disclosure: achieving a truly better class might require more work on the design of the class, updates to the workbooks, and creation of new videos than I will be able to do in this iteration. I do think we will get to “no worse” - but I underestimated how hard it would be to get to “as good as possible.”

Why get rid of lectures?

This class isn’t just online. I am going to try to do it without traditional lectures. The first 3 times I taught online, I kept the standard 2x75 minute lecture design - I just did those lectures over Zoom.

There are three problems that I am trying to fix with the “no lectures” design of the class.

1. The room. No need to go to the bad room with poor acoustics and a small screen. No more getting coated in chalk dust. No more being disrupted by students walking in late or having their phones ring. No need to trudge to campus on a freezing cold day in the snow. No more sharing flu/COVID germs.

2. The 75 minute chunk. No more requiring students to have 75 minutes of undivided attention. No more having to divide material into fixed-sized chunks. I can break things into pieces based on the content.

3. The disconnect with assignments. The main part of class is “doing” computer graphics. This is mainly trying the ideas (interacting with demos, trying to work out problems, doing programming assignments). With a lecture, students hear about the concepts, and then a week later see the problem for which they need it.

Of course, #1 is solved online. But #2 and #3 really get in the way of learning, and I hope we can do better.

Recording the lectures can partially address problem 1 (the room). But, as the videos get better (relative to the in-person), more students opt for the flexibility of not coming to class, so the room starts to empty out. We get the downsides of the terrible big room, but without the upsides of having everyone there to have the shared experience. Lecturing to an empty room is hard… you can’t read the students to control pacing, get questions to liven things up, get answers to rhetorical questions, etc.

The idea is to use the workbooks (not the lectures) as the organizing principle for class. (see Why focus on the workbooks, and not lectures?).

But what about the good points of in-person lectures?

Yes. There are good points to in-person lectures!

For one, they are really easy for the instructor! It is much less work to prepare a lecture (since I have 25+ years of experience doing it). But, I’ll work extra hard this semester - and learn some new things.

But for the student, we’ll need to have the design of the class make up for some of the things we’re losing. Here are a few advantages of in-person lectures.

1. They are synchronous - forcing students to come together at a specific time. This creates a natural pacing of class. We will try to recreate this by using weekly events to keep everyone on track - see Why do we have all of these surveys, checkpoints, and quizzes?
2. The instructor can get feedback from the students (watching for puzzled looks, chatting before and after, …). We will need to use other mechanisms for this, again see Why do we have all of these surveys, checkpoints, and quizzes?
3. There are good opportunities to ask for help. Either formally (e.g. raising your hand in class), or informally (e.g., talking to other students). We will create other mechanisms to provide help, like Piazza and consulting hours.
4. It provides opportunities for students to interact with each other and learn together. Sorry, for this iteration of class, I have no plan for how to recreate this.
5. It builds better connections between people. Again, for this first version of the class, I have no plan for what to do about this.

My experience was that most students were already missing out on these in-person advantages (by treating the class online). So, it might not be so bad. And, we can design the class to be better in other ways.

Why focus on the workbooks, and not lectures?

I believe that it is best to learn computer graphics by experimenting with examples, and trying to apply the concepts. Listening to an instructor talk about it is useful for conveying some of the content.

Historically, classes work by having the lectures be the main “driver” and using the “assignments” (like the workbooks) as exercises to check what you’ve learned afterwards. I want to flip this on its head.

I want to make the workbooks the primary activity. The “lectures” (videos) support the workbooks. Ideally, the workbooks guide you through the learning process, giving you interactive elements to learn with, and “assignments” that allow you to try out the concepts you are learning. When you get to a point in the workbook where you need something explained, we can have a video explaining it.

This is how (some) students were using the class anyway. They wouldn’t attend the lectures: they would focus on the workbooks, and watch the lectures when they needed something specific. I realized that if I were a student, this is how I would be learning.

So, I am trying to lean into the idea of making the workbooks the primary part of class, and using video to augment them. This means adding material and making more interactive examples to explain concepts, and having more programming practice to motivate and reinforce those concepts. And making short, focused videos that connect to the workbooks and explain concepts that are difficult to see in written descriptions.

Full disclosure: while this is the goal, I am not there yet. While I am redesigning and updating the workbooks and creating new videos, the redesign is not complete. A lot of what we will have this semester is repurposing the old workbooks and videos. Please bear with me… hopefully, even in this prototype version, it will be at least as good as the regular way.

Why are videos made into small chunks and placed inside the workbooks?

The chunks are based on topic - not on the need to have classes be 75 minutes. Placing the videos in the workbooks puts the topic where it is needed, when you need it. With a traditional lecture, you hear some material - and then a week later when you are doing the assignment, you realize that it would have been useful to pay attention to the lecture.

Ideally, the videos augment the workbooks: they do things that are difficult to do in writing (or interactively) in the workbook. For example, they provide an overview at the beginning of a module, or provide an example of a specific challenging point.

Ideally, these videos are quite different from lectures (or video lectures). With a lecture, there is a need to make things flow (so the small pieces add up to a coherent 75 minutes). With a lecture, there is a need to provide motivation for each piece. With a lecture, we use pacing (such as asking questions and pausing) to let students think things through for themselves. With a focused (designed) video, it can be much more concise: students have the context from the workbook, and if they need to stop to think they can pause the video.

Full disclosure: I am just learning how to make these kinds of videos, and have not made a complete set. Often I will need to repurpose segments of existing lectures.

Why do we have all of these surveys, checkpoints, and quizzes?

In a traditional lecture, students know the pace of class. They know where they should be with the material. We need mechanisms to help students stay synchronized (enough) with the class - but also to give them the flexibility to do the work when it is convenient. We need to help students avoid being surprised by the big pile of work at the end.

In a traditional lecture, I (as lecturer) get feedback from the students. I see confused looks, students ask questions (or fail to answer the questions I ask), I chat with students before/after class. In a remote setting, I lose all of those mechanisms. The surveys are one way of recreating them.

The surveys also serve another purpose: they can be used to provoke students’ thinking, foster reflection, and allow them to check their understanding. Of course, this requires the student to want to have these benefits. We cannot force students to learn from these exercises: if students don’t take them seriously, they won’t get the benefit. If students only want to fulfill the requirements to get a grade, they can do so without learning.

Therefore, we won’t use the surveys to accurately measure learning (other than a brief check - we’ll use the quizzes a little more). We will provide answers (so students can check), and do some checking for right answers. If students realize their answers are wrong, they can resubmit a quiz/survey after they see the answers. Copying the example answer is better than nothing (at least the student has seen the answer!), and if the student really “does the work” (completes the quiz on time, checks the answers, and then only updates their answers if they got things wrong), they get all the benefits.

Why the 2 week cadence (modules), rather than weekly?

In the past, we had a (smaller) workbook every week. This gave the class a consistent rhythm, but also an unforgiving pace.

The idea is to group pairs of weekly workbooks together into 2-week modules. The amount of material/work is the same. It’s just assigned in 2-week chunks. Students can pace themselves according to their schedules.

Of course, it means that students are required to pace themselves. If they try to do all 2 weeks’ worth of work at the end, they will probably be in for an unpleasant surprise.

To nudge students into following a good pace, we will have checkpoints that make sure that everyone starts the workbook at the beginning, and is making good progress by the halfway point.

From a practical point of view, it meant that we had a lot to grade, and had to provide rapid turnaround (on grading, exception handling, etc.). It also did not align well with the exam schedule.

Why not a traditional grading scheme?

The visual and interactive nature of computer graphics makes it quite difficult to do automatic grading.

We want students to be able to make interesting and creative things, which are difficult to assess. Conversely, we have a lot of small concepts that we want students to try out (often in small examples).

We want to focus on helping students learn as much as possible - not checking to see that they have done all of the details. We have limited TA time (and no graders), and we prefer to spend our time helping students (either directly or by creating interactive demos). Therefore, we cannot check everything carefully, and even if we did, there are often not clear “right answers” (since most assignments are open-ended and allow for some degree of artistry).

We want to make sure that students learn all parts of the class. Learning one thing exceptionally well doesn’t make up for not learning another. Therefore, averaging doesn’t make sense. We want students to do “everything” - but we also understand that life happens. At some point in the semester, you might get sick, or have an exam in another class, or get to celebrate a relative’s significant birthday. So, we try to reward consistency, not perfection.

So, we are trying an experimental grading scheme. We focus on the workbooks, since they are the main part of class: students should demonstrate that they can use the class concepts in the programs. We’ll grade them coarsely - not providing detailed feedback, just rough buckets.

We will use the other parts of class as a check system to make sure that the workbook grade represents the quality of achievement/learning in the class. Exams are imperfect measurements, so we will use them as a rough check (if your exam grade is very different from your workbook grade, we will look into it). Similarly, the quizzes are mainly a check that you are learning material in the workbooks.

We will use completion grading for the small parts of class that are used to keep everyone synchronized. We care that you do enough of these (to show us that you are keeping up with class), and are putting at least some effort into them. (see Why do we have all of these surveys, checkpoints, and quizzes? above). Hopefully, students are using the surveys as a way to check their knowledge, and communicate to us what is (and isn’t) working with the class.

Why the hard deadlines and cutoffs?

We want to give students some flexibility in when they do their work, but we also want to keep the class synchronized enough so that everyone gets through all the material over the course of the semester.

There are a few main causes of the deadlines/cutoffs:

• We want to release answers/sample solutions for the students doing things on time. If you turn something in late, you have had access to the sample solution. This isn’t necessarily bad (use the sample solution to help you get unstuck). But it is different.
• The pace of the class means that we need to be moving on to the next thing. We don’t want students trying to do advanced or creative things on older topics - this causes people to fall further behind. If you’re late, we want you to learn the basics (since future things build on it), and move on.
• Some deadlines (checkpoints) are mainly a reminder to students that they are falling behind.

Different parts of class have different “late” policies. Each has a different reason related to those 3 things above.

How will you assess workbooks?

We’ll check that students do “well enough” by checking some of the problems, assuming that (statistically) they are representative. We’ll look at the bigger, more open-ended parts

Telling a student “this is wrong” doesn’t necessarily help them learn how to do it correctly. Unfortunately, we lack the resources to give detailed feedback. Therefore, we will provide sample solutions and hints for students who are stuck. Yes, students can abuse these - but, if a student wants to get a grade without learning, there are many other ways.

We want students to focus on completing the “basics” before moving on to more advanced concepts and examples. Therefore, workbook grading separates demonstrating the “standard” pieces from the “advanced” pieces. You cannot get credit for advanced parts if you don’t do the standard parts first. Similarly, while we want students to do interesting and creative “mini-projects”, we want to make sure they have demonstrated their mastery of the material (in the standard and advanced pieces first).

Do I have to attend class?

This class is officially “online synchronous”. There are no required in-person class meetings. However, the class has a regularly scheduled time slot and a scheduled exam time slot.

The scheduled class time is MoWeFr 8:50AM - 9:40AM

Students are required to be available during the scheduled class times (including the exam). We may have required events during those times. For example, you may need to take an online exam or quiz during the class time.

So, no, you cannot (legally) take another class scheduled in the same time slot (it is against University policy).

As of right now (January 2026), my plan is to be flexible:

• We will have “required events” on Wednesdays in the class time slot. For example, on some Wednesdays (6 times over the semester), we will have a quiz in the class time slot. The quizzes will be shorter than the class time slot (details to be determined). On other Wednesdays, we might have “sprint assignments” (where you are given a small assignment to complete within the class time slot). For these, there will be opportunities to do the work “late”, but there will be penalties.
• For Mondays and Fridays, we will have occasional class meetings via Zoom. These will not have required attendance.
• The official exam time slot is 5:05-7:05PM on Tuesday, May 5th (subject to the registrar - who may change it). The exam will be given online. We will allow students to start the exam early (so they can manage a conflict with another exam).

The current plan (January 2026) is that there are no required class meetings. There are time-limited activities (e.g., quizzes and exams). There are online class meetings that are either optional (e.g., help sessions) or will be recorded. (we may not record help sessions, since students asking for help may not want to be recorded).

If there is a requirement for a specific time (e.g., I decide that there will be a required class meeting), I will provide at least two weeks’ notice.

Is this class curved?

No. There is no “curve”.

Students are graded against the “standard of mastery” (my expectations)—whether they have demonstrated mastery of the material—not against each other.

• There is no competition. If everyone succeeds, I have done a good job of teaching everyone (or I have a smart class). I have no problem giving everyone an A.
• The converse does not hold: there should be “enough” As. If not enough people succeed, either my standards are too high or I didn’t provide good enough opportunities for students to master the material. I shouldn’t penalize students for this, so I should change the standards.