Course Syllabus

• Course Schedule
• Syllabus
• Assignments

Course Description

Welcome to INFO 201 B, Technical Foundations of Informatics! This course introduces fundamental tools and technologies necessary to transform raw data into information. In doing so, you'll learn how to write code to work with data. We'll cover skill associated with each component of the information lifecycle, including the collection, storage, analysis, and visualization of data. Core competencies underlying this process, including data wrangling, version control, and command line proficiency, are acquired through real-world data-driven challenges.­­­ After finishing this course, you'll be ready to apply these data-skills to your field of interest, or pursue higher level informatics courses.

2021 COVID LOGISTICS

Since COVID is still affecting our lives, communities, and university, here are some notes about the class:

• As with all of UW, you will be required to wear a mask at all times during class that covers both your nose and mouth regardless of your vaccination status. Under this policy, your mask must fit snugly against the sides of the face and completely cover the nose and mouth. Bandanas and Gaiters are not considered face coverings for this policy. See the infographic below if you are unsure about the fit of your mask:

• If you forget your face mask, I will have some spare disposable masks you may use. I don't have many spares so please try to remember to bring your own mask.  
• Students who do not wear a face mask and refuse to wear one will be asked to leave the classroom. Repeated failure to wear a face covering may result in you being referred to the Student Conduct Office for possible disciplinary action. 
• Eating and drinking will not be allowed in the classroom. 

Required Course Materials

This course relies heavily on the book Programming Skills for Data Science, which you can access online (for free) using your UW Net ID through the UW library. 

The books is also available in print, which you can order through InformIT (Links to an external site.), Pearson (Links to an external site.), Amazon (Links to an external site.), or at a local bookstore (Links to an external site.).

Student Outcomes/Learning Goals

In this course, students will learn how to write code to read, wrangle, analyze, visualize, and communicate data. Through this course, you'll learn to:

• Provide instructions to your computer using the command line
• Create well-formatted code documentation using the Markdown syntax
• Understand the foundations of the R programming language
• Load, transform, reshape, and compute summary information on a variety of data structures
• Design and programmatically build insightful data visualizations
• Built interactive web applications to explore data and insights (from the R language)

Assignments

Because of the ever-changing nature of open source software, the purpose of this course is for students to learn how to teach themselves new tools (rather than learn a pre-defined set of skills). To accomplish this, students are expected to complete a series of weekly challenges that assess their progress throughout the course. We'll work with real-world data in this course, and students will be expected to use their programming skills to answer questions using those datasets.

As the course progresses, students will have an increasing amount of flexibility with the challenges. At the end of the course, students will complete a group project in which they take a deep dive into a dataset of their choice.

Weekly Quizzes (15% of the final grade)

You will have weekly take-home quizzes through Canvas. The quizzes have firm deadlines to push you to stay on track, but they can be taken as many times as you like before the deadline. Your lowest quiz score will also be dropped, to allow for unexpected life events. 

Lecture Exercises (10% of the final grade)

For almost every lecture, there will be exercise to work on in order to practice the concepts we are learning. There will be a turn-in for each of these to demonstrate that you are attempting the exercises (no need to prove you finished them or did them correctly).  Your lowest lecture exercises score will also be dropped, to allow for unexpected life events. 

Extra credit (up to 2% extra)

You can get extra credit by answering a question on one of the public Teams channels (like Homework Discussion). There are three extra credit assignments on canvas, and you can turn in one of your answers per extra credit assignment. You can get up to a 2% bonus on your final grade for turning in three different answers for the three canvas extra credit assignments, so each one is worth 2/3% (0.666%) of your final grade.

Grading

This course uses the iSchool Standard Grading Scheme, which converts percentage grades into 4.0 grades. Note, Canvas will not round grades before converting to a 4.0 scale.

Late Submissions

Students earn points by completing assignments thoroughly and on time. The maximum number of points a student can earn on any assignment will decrease by 5% per each 24 hour period after the deadline. Students have up to 1 week (7 days) to turn in a late assignment. We will not accept assignments after 7 days -- meaning that after 7 days, students will receive 0% credit on missing assignments. 

However, we provide flexibility (and more than usual due to the COVID-19) in the following forms:

• Individual Assignments: Each student has three late days to wave this penalty at their discretion. Late days cannot be used on the final project, and cannot be exchanged for assignment points. To use a late day, you please make a comment on Canvas at the time of submission indicating the number of late days you would like to use. Also be warned: Assignments build on each other, so it can be easy to fall behind in this class. For your own sake, please work ahead and try to reserve late days for getting sick or other emergencies. 
• Practice Quizzes: Your lowest quiz score will be automatically dropped.
• Group Project: We do not accept late days on group projects
• Extenuating Circumstances and Personal Emergencies: If you have anticipated circumstances that warrant an additional extension (e.g. school related travel), you must request an extension at least one week in advance. If you experience a personal emergency (e.g., physical/mental health, family emergency, etc.), please reach out to us when possible and we will make the appropriate accommodations.

Grading Clarifications

Resources

Student Resources
A number of challenges from a variety of directions can affect your ability to bring your optimal attention and energy to a course. Student Resources is a set of links to campus resources that UW makes available to students in trying to mitigate and cope with some of these challenges.

iSchool Technology Requirements
The iSchool has a set of technology requirements for both online and residential students. We highly recommend that students adhere to these standards which are updated annually. Students who do not meet these standards may experience technology problems throughout the course.

iSchool Learning Technologies Support Site
Knowledge base for Canvas, VoiceThread, web conferencing systems, and other learning technologies tools.

UW Libraries
In this course you may be required to access a large number of databases through the Internet. Several of these databases are publicly available, but some are proprietary and access requires authentication through the UW Libraries. Information about logging in to use these databases is available on the Connecting to the Libraries page.

Academic Conduct

Please review the iSchool Academic Policies which cover:

• Academic and Behavioral Misconduct
• Academic Integrity
• Copyright
• Privacy
• Concerns About a Course
• Evaluation of Student Work

In this course, we want to achieve a collaborative and supportive environment, but have very strict limitations around that type of collaboration. The following represent permissible (and encouraged!) forms of collaboration:

• Asking a friend to explain a general concept or problem solving approach
• Posting an error message to the slack channel to ask for help
• Asking people to share publicly available resources that help solve a problem
• Sharing your code with your TA or instructor to ask for more involved help

However, the following are explicitly not permitted:

• Your individual assignment code may never appear on another person's computer (in any format). This includes opening the code in a browser, sending a screenshot, etc.
• You must never submit assignment code that someone else wrote (including other students, or someone on the web).
• If your individual assignment code is based on a tutorial or other resource that you find online, you must provide a reference to that resource (a URL is fine)
• You must not publish your individual assignment code (because the code may be used in a future or concurrent course).

If there is any suspicion of plagiarism (code sharing, copying code from the internet without attribution, or other forms), there will be notable consequences both within the context of this course and in the University at large. At a minimum, students will receive a zero on an assignment, however there may be larger consequences depending on the situation. If you have any questions about the appropriateness of using open source code or working together, don't hesitate to ask.

Religious Accommodation

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.