← CS 61A Fall 2023

Syllabus

Contents

Course syllabus

Please refer to the course syllabus for relevant policies and information that apply to the course as a whole.

Section information

  • TA: Gabe Classon
  • Lab academic interns: Rudy Colato, Jiajun Liu, Anshu Jayaprakash
  • Lab: Tuesday 12:30-2:00 p.m. in Soda 330
  • Discussion: Thursday 12:30-2:00 p.m. in Soda 405

Goals

The purpose of discussion and lab sections is to exercise and cement the knowledge you gained in lecture. Discussion focuses on on-paper problem-solving skills and challenging theoretical concepts—skills useful for exams. Discussion has a strong emphasis on group work. Lab focuses on technical implementation skills and further builds upon the ideas you learn in class, which are relevant for homework and projects. Both are integral to your computer science education.

Structure

Labs and discussions will start on Berkeley time, so they will be 80 minutes long.

Discussion centers around working through a worksheet of problems. The worksheet may be completed on paper or on your computer. (I recommend the paper version.) We will never work through all of the problems on a worksheet. By design, the worksheet is too long to complete in the allotted time so that you have some extra practice problems if you want them.

Lab is centered around the completion of a lab assignment on your computer and submitted to Gradescope. You will have the assistance of an autograder. The labs are designed to be able to be completed during the allotted time. The AIs and I will work hard to ensure that you are able to complete the lab assignment within the lab section.

Community Expectations

Collaboration and participation are highly encouraged in discussion and lab section. I expect you to work on lab/discussion problems together, and I will frequently ask you to talk to your neighbors. I know that breaking the ice can often be painful, but we all end up better when we work on things together.

Getting to that collaborative course climate requires that we all commit to being respectful toward each other. Remember always that your peers are human beings, and you never know what's going on in their day or life. So please be understanding and kind to each other.

Discrimination, of course, is unacceptable. I know you all agree with me about that. In this class, I also want you to pay attention to your unconscious biases. Often times, the things we say or the way we treat other people are influenced by factors we are not even aware of. Be cognizant of that when you form groups and respond to other students.

Finally, making this section worthwhile does require some amount of courage on your part. The courage to ask questions, to be wrong, and to reach out to people we might not otherwise reach out to. This may be a challenge, but we're all in this together.

Grading

Discussions and labs account for 20/300 points, or 6.67%, of your grade.

Discussion participation (10 points)

You will receive one point for each discussion after disc00 that you attend. Participation is determined through your completion of a brief form and is verified through a secret word distributed at the end of each section. Lying on this form or sharing the secret word for the purpose of misrepresenting attendance is academic dishonesty.

Lab (10 points)

Each lab is worth one point. To earn credit for lab, you must correctly complete all required questions by the lab due date and receive attendance for attending lab by truthfully completing the lab attendance form with the correct secret word. There are three ways to get the secret word:

  • If you attend lab in person, I will post a secret word for everyone to use at the end of section, regardless of whether you have finished or not.
  • If you attend lab in person but finish early, you may leave once you have correctly completed all required and optional questions. Raise your hand after running the autograder with python3 ok --all and Gabe will come give you the secret word to fill out.
  • If you do not wish to attend lab in person, you may correctly complete all required and optional questions before the start of lab section. email Gabe with a link to your Gradescope submission, and he will send you a secret word to fill out the check-off form with.

Absences

Since there are more discussions than possible section points, you can miss a few discussions and still get full credit. The same goes for labs. Unfortunately, we do not provide extra credit for attending/completing more than 10 discussions/labs. However, I highly encourage you to attend as many sections as possible. Attending section is super helpful for success in this course.

In the event of illness, reasonable suspicion of illness, family/medical emergencies, etc., I do not want you to come to class. Absences for these reasons are excused because there are some things more important in life than CS 61A. If you need to be excused from discussion/lab, please send me an email to let me know you will not be coming to class and why, and I will send you a secret word to fill out the attendance form. Please note that to receive credit for a lab, you still have to correctly complete and submit the required questions on the lab assignment before the due date and fill out the check-off form even if you have been excused from the lab. If you would like to have more time to submit the lab questions to Gradescope, you can fill out the extension form.

If you need help

In general, if you need help outside of discussion/lab, the following resources are available to you:

Course website

For course policy questions or generic written advice, please see cs61a.org. It has the course syllabus in addition to written guides that can help you navigate the course.

EdStem

For online, asynchronous debugging assistance, other questions about course material, or course policy questions that are not answered by the syllabus, please use EdStem.

Office hours

For personalized, in-person help with homework, lab, or project problems, you can come into office hours. The hours and specific staff members providing office hours may vary from week to week. You do not have to attend the office hours of your discussion TA for this kind of help.

Advising office hours are also available by appointment for advisory questions unrelated to specific course content (e.g. declaring the computer science major).

External/additional resources

Resources for urgent support

  • Counseling and Psychological Services
    • CAPS supports the emotional, psychological, educational, social, and cultural development of all UC Berkeley students through a wide range of multiculturally based counseling, psychiatric, career, consultation, training, and educational services.
    • Phone: (510) 642-9494
    • After hours assistance line: (855) 817-5667
  • PATH to Care
    • Affirming, empowering, and confidential support for those that have experienced gendered violence, including sexual harassment, dating and intimate partner violence, sexual assault, stalking, and sexual exploitation.
    • Phone: (510)642-1988
    • 24/7 Care Line: (510) 643-2005

Resources for reporting discrimination

Resources for students with disabilities

Resources for Women + GNC students:

Resources for LGBTQ+ students:

Resources for Students of color:

Resources for Transfer Students:

Email me

Feel free to email me at classon⁠@⁠berkeley.edu if you ever have any questions or concerns! I'll do the best I can to help you out.

A note on office hours

As with most CS courses at UC Berkeley, office hours in CS 61A are for technical help. You go to the office hours room, put yourself on the queue, and wait for a staff member to help you. After the staff member is done helping you, they move on to help the next person on the queue. Our staff is amazing, and this system works really well for assisting students who need a little extra help on their assignments! (Really, I do encourage you to go to office hours.) But I do feel that something is missing from the equation.

"Office hours," as they are traditionally conceived, are a place where you can freely talk to and think with your teachers. Instructor office hours allow you to have that kind of experience with the professors. But for us regular UGSIs, ordinary office hours really don't provide that space.

So if you want to expound on a concept in CS, to receive miscellaneous advice, or to talk about anything else (it doesn't necessarily have to be course related or super pressing), I encourage you to either stay a few minutes after section or to email me to set up a meeting. I think students often don't believe that instructors are serious when they make this kind of offer, but we really mean it. I really do want to talk to you (yes you, the student reading this).

That being said, I cannot offer help on homework or lab, or provide any sort of personal tutoring, during such a meeting as a matter of policy.

Feedback

I welcome and encourage honest feedback from students in my section! Our attendance form includes (optional) feedback questions. Additionally, there is a form for you to provide feedback to me where you have the option of remaining anonymous. I will also be asking for feedback from you in the middle of the semester.

Extensions

I do not have the power to grant extensions even in extenuating circumstances. Please go to go.cs61a.org/extensions to request an extension. If you email me about extensions, I will just send you this information.

24-hour extension requests made for any reason are approved automatically. For DSP students, the window for a no-questions-asked extension is 72 hours.

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