TA FAQ

New Teaching Assistant FAQ

This FAQ is mainly designed for new Computer Science TAs looking for help with the CS department's computer resources, such as CoSATS, GRIT, Submit, Forums, etc.

Who is Operator and how do I contact them?

Operator (aka operator@cs.umn.edu, aka operator@itlabs.umn.edu) is a group of hard-working staff members that live in the basement of the EE/CS building. Operator handles perhaps 90% of things that you will need to do to set up a course. Operator will set up accounts for you for web space, grit, submit, forums, and miscellaneous shared class space, if necessary. Operator can also supply you with a computer for discussion sessions, set up your wireless, and all sorts of other things. Be nice to Operator. Operator has the power.

What is CoSATS?

CoSATS stands for Computer Science Automated Template System. It is simply a set of pre-written php pages that will allow you to easily create a web page that looks a lot like other class web pages and has some standard links.

How do I set up CoSATS?

First you'll need to have operator set up web space for your class and add your account to the proper group to have access to the web space.

Once you have access to the web directory, (you will get an e-mail confirmation from operator) download this index.php.txt file, save it as index.php in your web directory.

Edit your newly renamed index.php file:

Set $CLASS_NAME_SHORT to be the 4-letter 4-number code. (For me, it's "CSCI 2021")
Set $CLASS_NAME to be the full name of the course. (Again, for me, "Machine Architecture and Organization")
Add any extra links you might need to $EXTRA_LINKS. (Usually forum, GRIT, submit, etc.)

By default, the information that is displayed in the content frame of the CoSATS system comes from home.html. I usually post dates and general announcements in this file.

As you create html files in the root directory, the CoSATS php files will see them and add them to the left-hand list of the index page. Common file names to use are: syllabus.html, assignments.html, office_hours.html, schedule.html, f_a_q.html, etc.

Note: Be sure that all of these files are world-readable! CoSATS will not generally give 403 (access denied) errors for main-page items.

What is GRIT?

GRIT stands for Grades for IT, or Grading for IT or something like that. It is a system that will allow you to post students' grades online, but the students will only have access to their own grades and some statistics about the class grades overall (min, max, and average for each assignment.)

How do I use GRIT?

E-mail Operator with your class information and a request to set up GRIT.

The GRIT format is a bit strange, so I usually start with a template I created a while ago. (Excel version)

You'll notice that the template has 2 sheets. One is for keeping track of the actual scores, the other is for formatting all the scores in a GRIT-friendly manner.

On the GRIT sheet, the second cell (A2) contains a GRIT-style version of your class descriptor. In the template, this is CSCI1902.1.SU.2007. In general, this format is CSCINNNN.S.T.YYYY , where NNNN is the course number, S is the course section (usually 1, unless you want to keep track of section scores separately which is hard and not recommended,) T is the term, F for fall, S for spring or SU for summer, and YYYY is the year.

If you use the score tracking sheet properly, formulas on the GRIT sheet should copy over the relevant data from the score tracking sheet. You'll notice in the template I gave you, there are two homework assignments and one midterm grade so far. As the class progresses, you can use the AutoFill feature of OpenOffice to copy over the scores to the next columns on the GRIT sheet.

To be able to use these scores in GRIT, you'll need to save the GRIT sheet as a csv file. When you save as csv in OpenOffice, it allows you to control the delimiter characters. For this, you'll want to set the field delimiter to ':' and the text delimiter to '' (that is, nothing.)

Now when you've saved your csv file, you'll want to do one more quick thing so that grit likes it: You'll want to remove extraneous colons. Usually I do this with the following sed command:

cat gradefile.csv | sed 's/::*/:/g' > gritfile.csv

Now that your GRIT file is properly formatted, you can submit it to the GRIT system:

grit gritfile.csv

Other notes about using GRIT:

Make sure to include the link to grit on your class web page:

https://wwws.cs.umn.edu/grit/

GRIT allows for comments about students' homeworks or exams within the grading system. I never use the comments, because GRIT is unpredictably picky about what punctuation is usable.

Students often think that GRIT is the end-all be-all of their grades. Make sure to inform them that this is not necessarily the case. GRIT is only a system that you use to report their grades, and might not always be completely up to date if a student had you regrade a question ten minutes ago.

That said, if you get the grades up in GRIT in a timely manner, students will notice and appreciate it.

GRIT can also be used to give you statistics about the students' overall performance. To learn about GRIT's statistics functions, try

grit --help

or take a look at Operator's tutorial for GRIT here.

What is submit?

The submit tool is a command-line and web-based tool that allows students to submit their homework assignments. I recommend choosing one of the two tools and only teaching the students that. Usually, I choose the web-based tool for csci 1902, because in that class students often write code from home. Teaching them the web-based tool means that it is easier for them to submit their code from their home computers.

How do I use submit for grading?

As with all things CS, e-mail Operator to ask for submit to be set up for your class. Send Operator your class information.
Operator will set up a directory for your class in /project/submit. For example, /project/submit/Fall-2007/csci2021.
In your submit class directory use the file named hwnames.txt to control the names of allowed submissions. Note: Keeping this file up to date is very important! If you do, you can bar late submissions.
When students use the tool to submit assignments, each section gets a directory, and each student gets a directory in the section that they are in.
The submit tool currently will create a symbolic link to the most recent submission by the student of that assignment. The tool allows for multiple submissions, however and older submission are saved in the system.
It is likely that you will want to copy the students' work from the submit directory into one where you have write privileges. (To compile it, perhaps.)

Other notes about submit:

If you are using the web-based client, remember to add a link to your class home page:
```
https://wwws.cs.umn.edu/submit/
```
When using submit, I often require students to submit a "Lab0" assignment that is simply a text file with their username and section and maybe some other information. This way you can make sure that the infrastructure is set up properly before any real assignments come in.

What is this Forum thing?

Operator maintains a set of forums that is accessible to all ITLabs and CS accounts at

https://wwws.cs.umn.edu/it-forum/index.php

Upon request, they will set one up for your class.

Do I need a forum for my class?

This is a good question. For large classes (> 30 or so) I would recommend setting one up, since it is usually the case that many students will have the same questions about homework. The trade off is that you must check the forum often, or it will die of neglect. To alleviate this problem, when students send me questions about homework, I will often post the question and its answer on the forum, then tell the student to look at the forum for the answer. That way, you can force the students to get used to looking at the forum. It may pick up and get used a lot, it may not. I always feel that it's worth using, because it requires relatively little effort on the TA's part.

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.