As a course and a student body, we are more remote than usual, and preferable. To help bridge the chasm, I will leverage some of the technology platforms Northeastern makes available to us.

Duo 2FA

Most if not all students will already have enrolled themselves for the Duo 2FA system. It is essential that you do so to access Northeastern’s digital resources. Northeastern has at least two tutorials for installing and using the Duo 2FA system:

Piazza

Piazza.com hosts our main Q&A forum. We are everyone learning; no one knows all the answers, and remember that everyone wears their best and most knowledgeable face. For questions related to the course material, assignments, policies, or what have you, please utilize Piazza. I generally prefer anonymous Piazza posts over email—this way others get the benefit of your thoughtful question and answers and corrections scale to the size of our class. Please do anonymize them if you wish; we can see even if you cannot. Frequently someone will have the same concern or be feeling the same way.

If it doesn’t “give away the punchline” of some homework question or assignment, necessitate PII in the question or the answer, and isn’t contrary to FERPA or your rights under the Northeastern University Handbook, please do consider if this can be a Piazza message.

KCCS/CCIS/CCS Github

I will be utilizing the school’s Enterprise git at [http://ccs.github.neu.edu]. You should have access to that with your KCCS account. I will expect you to know how to access this, for your own benefits and for coursework. If you are not familiar, please consult the Khoury Systems group’s documentation and walk-through.

Hypothes.is

Register here for Hypothes.is, the collaborative editing tool. I will expect student to collaboratively edit and annotate certain notes and documents. As you read complete the reading assignments, you will often find areas that are less clear than others, or sub-optimally ordered, or deficient in a variety of other ways.

Chrome users can download and install the extension, if you wish. Users of other browsers can install the bookmarklet. I will link all our ~.pdf~ documents via hypothesis. FYI, if you are on an Android device, you can send any page to hypothesis via the following app.

https://hypothes.is/groups/97DiEo3n/fa20cs2800

Course Homepage

I constructed our course homepage as a Jekyll site built with Github Pages. Student corrections and improvements are incredibly welcome! You can submit a pull request (PR) for a quick correction and improvement. Every page on this website has a direct links to its ~.md~ file in this repository.

Canvas

It is my intention to use Canvas solely to collect and maintain our grades.

Handin Server

We will use the Handin server (bottlenose) to submit homework. You will likely have experience with this platform from Fundies I; if you do not, please read the Handin Server Guide.

PollEverywhere

As a part of a participation grade, I will be asking poll questions in class (often several per class). These will constitute a part of your grade. I will expect you to login to answer, during the class period itself. You should ensure that you have added your northeastern university email address account, and have this active and enabled.

You can use the web browser, the desktop app, or the mobile app (Apple) (Android). Regardless of however you configure this, have it with you and available at all times.

There is a KB Article on logging in via Northeastern.

Zoom

I intend to broadcast our course meetings via Northeastern Zoom. I prefer it over MS Teams for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is the instantaneous and anonymous feedback that it provides, via Dial testing. You will find it helpful to have two internet-enabled devices with at hand when you are attending class remotely, once for viewing the class and a second for answering poll questions.

Via direct installation.

If you have difficulty installing or using the platform please see ITS’ associated KB article or contact Zoom support.

Via the browser

You also have the option to join without downloading or installing any software, via the Zoom web client. The web client does not have all the functionality of the desktop or mobile apps; please see the comparison here.

NEU VPN

Go to http://vpn.northeastern.edu, and follow the instructions to install the GlobalProctect VPN client on your machine. You will need this to use the VDI linux machines. If you have difficulty please consult the relevant ITS KB articles, and if necessary reach out to ITS support.

VDI Linux Machines

Khoury VDI Virtual Desktops, and the relevant ITS KB articles.

Eclipse & ACL2s

Follow the Installation Instructions as part of the first lab. You will know you have this installed correctly if you can achieve the following.

CodeTogether

We will expect you to be able to share your screen with us (and one another) via the CodeTogether platform. You can install it from here by following their instructions. If you have difficulty you can get the best help from CodeTogether chat.

Waitwhile

As you may or may not have heard, this semester all courses’ office hours are remote, by teleconference. Waitwhile will be our office hours queue management system. Here is the 2800 Waitwhile Office Hours Queue