This project includes select labs that I designed as a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for SI507 Intermmediate Programming at the University of Michigan, School of Information (UMSI).
This project is made up of work that was completely my own during my time as a GSI. It is also stripped of course details and solutions to protect the integrity of the course. You can contact me (avliu@umich.edu) for solutions.
There are four labs contained in this project. Three of them, api, functions_as_aruguments, and scraping, are made up of a presentation and corresponding python notebook exercise(s). While some content for presentation materials existed, no prior lab Python notebooks existed for this course. The notebooks are designed with scaffolding to remove unnecessary time developing "boiler-plate" code.
A key challenge of teaching these labs was accomodating students of skill levels ranging from novice to proficient. Thus, I designed labs in such a way where the code that the student developed themselves for the lab could be immediately copied into their current projects without too many changes.
The final lab is schelling_model, where students were meant to gain as much information to implement a version Schelling's model of segregation. It is not associated with any code. However, I include it because it serves as a demonstration of a lab that thoroughly connected general theory and motivation directly to students' specific assignment:
- I gave context of the Schelling model, and reminded students that the model itself is flawed if one does not subscribe to the view that all residents of metropolitan America in the 1960's had free choice to choose where they live (e.g. Racially Restrictive Covenants).
- I gave students the algorithm for Schelling's model and had them perform it by hand in order to develop an intuition for the "Agents" they would about to be coding.
- I explained an Object Oriented Diagram (OOD) to them, and showed them that the code for the Schelling model homework assignemnt could be represented by one. Then, I marked each question number of the homework pdf to the different attributes and methods that made up the OOD.