Hey everyone! This week I thought I’d tell you a little bit about my new job that I started this semester – being a Course Producer for CSCI 103: Introduction to Programming.
One of the great things about the way CS courses are structured here is that many of them have very large instructional staff to give students the most help possible. In addition to the professor and the graduate student TAs, CS classes often have a team of undergraduates called Course Producers who provide additional support in labs and office hours. We help with anything from homework and lab help, to programming assignment grading and questions, to general programming practice questions.
CSCI 103 is the very first programming class that Computer Science majors take. It goes over everything you would need to know to make some pretty cool applications including control structures, memory management, debuggers, GUI, and so on.
It’s really cool how explaining concepts to other students helps me review and learn even more about the concepts I learned when I took the class! Being a Course Producer is a great way to keep my C/C++ and Linux skills sharp, as well as learn a couple new tricks along the way. For example, the CSCI 103 students are currently learning a little bit about image processing and animation, which wasn’t a project I had when I took the class. So, I’m able to learn a couple cool things along the way.
An example from a CS 103 Assignment…the planets are drawn and animated to move based on various physical requirements.
