I have established a course mailing list for course-related discussion, to which all and only enrolled students in the class and myself are members. The purpose of this list is to facilitate communication between members of the class, for such things as clarification of class discussion and for people to ask questions of one another about the material. When any of us mails a message to the list, the message will automatically be distributed to all members of the class. I will announce the email address of the class list and also post it on the course homepage. Note that you can only post to this list if you are emailing from the account that UW associates with you. The link below should provide more information on this.
Feel free to use this mailing list to discuss anything concerning the class sessions and the use of our computing resources. However, I ask that you honor the following constraint: any posting related to the assignments should only deal with a clarification as to what the assignment means. Please do not post questions about how to do any of the assignment (project, program, etc. -- this is better dealt with a one-on-one tutorial session), or post any parts of answers/solutions to the assignments.
This email list provides an opportunity for collaboration. However, it should be done so in a way that is consistent with the Policy on Collaboration. I will explain what I have in mind. One of the main questions I receive from students is "Can you look over my assignment X to see if I am doing it right?" I can often do this, but as the number of students grows and the assignments get more complex, it is harder for me to do this. More importantly, part of your learning any skill is developing the ability to evaluate how well you are applying the skill. So at some point you must develop your own ability to critique your work and the work of others. That is, the focus here needs to be more on the process by which a solution is developed and less on the solution itself; if you learn the process then the solution will not be so difficult to generate. Here is where the mailing list comes into play. Suppose that there is an assignment to create some program (or document), and you are in the middle of developing your solution. You would like feedback from other students, and also like to see what other students are doing so that you can learn from their mistakes and successes. The policy on collaboration explicitly prohibits the sharing of solutions. However, you can take a problem that is substantially different than the assigned problem, and use the process that you have been practicing to generate your solution to the practice problem. And then you can post your solution to the practice problem to the course email list, asking for feedback from other students. In this way, students will achieve their goal of getting feedback on how they apply the process, they will begin to cultivate abilities to critically examine their work and the work of others, and they will not be violating the policy on collaboration.
Finally, you can only email to this list from your UW email account.