It's the End of the Course!

Congratulations!

We've made it to the last day! If this was an in person class, I would have brought in some sort of food and we would celebrate, but we can't do that over the internet. Have a browser cookie.

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I hope that this course has taught you something new and useful, and that you will be enabled to do new things in your work, research, or hobbies. I hope that you can look back on your notes in this course - and on the course resources, which will remain up for as long as I can leave them at Purdue and possibly longer - when you need or want the technologies we have explored.

Taking the first step in a new direction is always hard, and we have taken a lot of first steps over the semester. Take some time to reflect over how far we've come over the last 8 weeks!

Along those lines, we've only scratched the surface of each of these technologies - and there are countless useful technologies we couldn't find the time to cover, and technologies I have never even heard about that will prove invaluable to some of you some day. Learning new technologies - new ways of seeing the world - is one of my great joys in life, and I am happy to have been given the opportunity to try to share that with you all.

Course Evaluations

If this course was valuable to you, and you are enrolled, the best thing you can do is submit a positive course evaluation with good comments. The administration is open to running this - or something like this - again if it can be shown to be successful, and I feel these are important skills to be teaching.

I will also be sending out a survey after the course, and another survey in a year. These are not planned for publication, just to gauge how people feel their skills have grown and whether they have used the technologies over the coming year. Please do fill that survey out as well! Your honesty will help gauge and improve the course and its material.

Beyond that, I want the course and its resources to be as good as possible. I am open to hearing any comments or concerns you have about the semester, and how it went for you!

Final Project

We're not quite done yet - there's one final task.

Your final project is to start something new using at least one of the skills you learned in this course, and give an informal 10-minute presentation on how you used or plan to use these technologies to achieve a goal you set for yourself.

You should set a meeting time, over email or other form of communication, with me. For setup or additional discussion, times are blocked out in half hour increments over the three final days (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday). I will be adding them to the course calendar, so you can see what times are claimed:

If you are not enrolled in the course, but have an idea for a project, I'd love to hear about it - either through a zoom call like the enrolled, or just over email.

If you do not have an idea for a project, then we can discuss possibilities based on your particular interests. I am certain there is something relevant to you, and to one of the domains in the course, that you can use as a final project.

Passing

This course is a P/F course, and I will be following the default university guidance. That means that - by the end of Friday - to receive a pass, equivalent to a C-, you should strive for at least 70% of the points on Brightspace, and to complete the final presentation. I would appreciate if - at least, on your own time - you went over any material you were not able to complete during the semester.

I have been, and will try to be, flexible with when the assignments are turned in. However, there are several people who are a few weeks behind, and as such it may take some time to grade the assignments as they come in.

If you feel your situation is exceptional, and you will not be able to meet this standard in time, we can find a time to discuss the particulars of your situation, and a plan for what grade is appropriate. My goal has always been the sharing of skills, not evaluating or judging, and I hope that every one of you can pass the course.