How to Navigate

SCx Classes
Chris Caplice
 Agenda of Items
• How are SCx courses laid out?
• How and who should I ask for help?
• How should I respond to numeric questions?
• What is the academic honesty policy?

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SCx Course Layout

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There are four tabs at the top of each page.
• Home – announcements and handouts
• Course – shows all sections
• Discussion – for the forum
• Progress – tells you how you are doing.

SCx courses are between 6 and 10

weeks in length, plus a final exam.

Each week is its own section.

Material is made available each week

according to the class schedule.

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The Home Tab contains:
• Updates & Announcements – posted ~weekly
• Important Course Dates & UTC Time Clock
• Course Handouts – differs by class
• Course Documents
• Key Concept Document
• FAQs

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Course Tab – shows all material by week

Each week typically consists of:

• 1 Welcome Video
• 1-3 Lessons (videos & quick questions)
• 1 Set of Practice Problems
• 1 MicroMaster's Section
• 1 Graded Assignment.

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Each Lesson consists of 6-10 video The upper scroll bar can
segments interspersed with quick help you go through the
questions. Total video time per lesson video segments or QQ’s in
each lesson
is ~ 60 minutes.

The first video segment is special. It

contains all Reference Materials for
the entire lesson.

If there are corrections or specific

handouts for another video segment,
they will be shown below that
segment. Reference Material section is on
first segment of each lesson. It
Note that all videos will have a contains all needed materials
transcript and they can be sped up or for that lesson. You might need
slowed down in the edX platform. If to scroll down to find this!
you download the video, these
features may not be available due to
your media player.
Quick Questions are interspersed
between the videos. They are
not graded and are intended to
only reinforce the basic concepts
of the video segment.

Note that all videos and quick

questions have a Discussion
Forum link. Please use this link
as it automatically categorizes
your post!

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Practice Problems for the entire week (not each lesson) are in a separate section. They are not
graded and tend to be more involved than Quick Questions. They are usually numeric and are
intended to test your ability to apply the concepts within the week.

All Practice problems have detailed explanations to help you learn the concepts. Collaboration
is encouraged for Practice Problems and Quick Questions in order to improve learning!

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The MicroMaster’s Supplemental Material section contains
additional practice problems and optional readings on that
week’s topics. This material is available only to Verified
Certificate students for that class.

The material is NOT required for any of the graded

assignments. It is supplemental and complimentary to all of
the other material.
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Many of the readings in the Supplemental section are theses
from the MIT SCM Program.

Students who complete the MicroMaster’s Credential and

continue on to earn the MIT SCM Master’s degree will need
to complete a comparable thesis. 11
The Graded Assignments section contains the
only problems that are graded for that week.

The purpose of these questions is to assess

and evaluate how well you understand the
concepts. You will have limited number of
responses, solutions will not be shown, and
explanations will not be released.

Also, Graded Assignments will naturally be

more difficult and involved than either the
Practice Problems and Quick Questions. They
are here to challenge you!

COLLABORATION OF ANY SORT BETWEEN

STUDENTS IS NOT TOLERATED ON GRADED
ASSIGNMENTS. 12
The Discussion Tab leads to the Discussion Forum. This is
where you can post comments and ask general questions. I
strongly recommend that you use the link after each problem
or video to post your questions – that makes it easier to
answer! Some posts will be “Pinned” this means we will keep
it at the top. You may sort and search the discussions.

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The Progress Tab shows how well you have
done in all work for grade. To pass, your
average end grade needs to be 60% or higher
– not each assignment.

Practice problems and Quick Questions do

NOT show up even when you complete
them! Only work that goes to your final
grade (Graded Assignments and Final Exam).

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How to ask for help
Inspired by Roger Peng and Arun Kunchithapatham

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Who is there to help on Course Material?
Your Fellow Classmates
(10k to 30k)
Community TAs (5-10)

MIT TAs (1-3)

Instructors (1-2)

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 Asking for Help – Three Paths
• SCx Discussion Forum
– For general questions, thoughts, and comments
– For Quick Questions and Practice Problems
– NEVER USED FOR GRADED ASSIGNMENTS
– TAs and CTAs will monitor and assist
(e.g., use [email protected] for SC1x,
• TA Email sc#[email protected] use [email protected] for SC2x, etc. )

– Only used for Graded Assignment and Final Exam clarification

questions
– Not intended to be a “Tip Hotline”! No tips or hints will be provided.
• edX Technical or Financial Issues
– The course staff cannot help you with payment, Photo ID, or technical
platform issues.
– https://www.edx.org/contact-us for general requests
– [email protected] for technical platform issues
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 Which Path To Use?
Example 1. TA Email sc#[email protected]
“Why isn’t Graded Assignment • It involves graded work – DO NOT POST TO FORUM!
question 2.3 accepting decimals?” • It is exploring whether there is an error or if they have a
misunderstanding of the question.
Example 2.
“I do not understand how to Discussion Forum
• It involves a general concept
calculate the critical ratio as
• It is not specific to any graded work
shown in video 4?” • Use the link provided from the Video Segment in question

Example 3. edX Issue https://www.edx.org/contact-us

“Hey, why is my credit card • It involves the platform not the course material
being turned down?” • edX controls all verification and financial issues

Example 4. There is no path for these types of questions!

“I am down to my last attempt on • Graded Assignments are here for assessment
• Make sure you understand the concepts in the Practice
Graded Assignment question 1.2. I
Problems prior to trying the Graded Assignment problems.
need help!
Discussion Forum
Example 5. • This is where your peers, the TAs, and the CTAs can help
“I am down to my last attempt on you understand the concept in question.
Practice Problem 1.2. I need help. • Collaboration is ENCOURAGED for Practice Problems.
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• Use the link provided at the Practice Problem
 When Requesting Help to a Problem . . .
• CHECK WHETHER THE QUESTION HAS ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED!!!!
• Be sure to let us know which problem you are talking about
– If a quick question or practice problem – use the discussion link from that location
– If a Graded Assignment – specify the Week and Problem Number in the subject line
• Be explicit about your question
– What exactly is the problem and what have you tried already?
– Sometimes explaining the problem helps you understand where you made a mistake anyway
• Provide the minimum amount of information needed to help solve
– Again – this helps you understand your own problem
– No one wants to debug your spreadsheet from scratch or read through hundreds of formulas
– Just posting your convoluted spreadsheet and asking someone to fix it is not helpful!
• Be courteous
– Electronic communication is inherently impersonal – frustration translates into anger in
email!
– Everyone is trying to help
– Community TAs especially are doing this out of the goodness in their hearts!
• Let us know if you solved your own problem
– This saves us time and also makes us feel good that you figured it out on your own! 20
 Things to Not Do
• Claim that you found an error or bug in the problem
– 99.9% of the time it is not the case
– Don’t make it your default response to not getting a correct answer.
• Post graded assignments on the Discussion forum
– This is considered a form of illegal collaboration and violates the honesty policy
– They will be removed and the posting student will be dealt with severely
• Ask the TA to “Find the problem”
– This is especially true for sc#xhelp emails
– This email is to clarify the questions, not provide tips or hints!
• Be unreasonable in requesting help
– Sending in a question and asking for a status every 30 minutes will not speed things up!
– Emailing us a question for a Graded Assignment an hour or two before it is due is a bad idea
– We strive to respond to every posted and emailed question within 24 hours
• Post a question that is barely legible or understandable
– We know that English is not the first language for many students – but please take the time to
at least proof read your email prior to posting.
– It is hard enough to trouble shoot the problems without having to troubleshoot the posting!
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 Very Bad to Bad to Better Emails!
The Ugly
This type of email wastes everyone’s time. We have
no information to help solve your problem! Our
response back to will always be “What problem are
you talking about?”

The Bad
The question is named in the subject – good! But,
immediately blaming the problem is not helpful.
Again, we have no understanding of what you did.
We will have to reply back – “What steps did you
take?” or “What assumptions have you made?”

The Good
You identify the problem and you tell us
what you have tried and the assumptions
you made. We can now respond
intelligently – “Perhaps you should check
your conservation of flow constraints for
your DC’s?” 22
Tips on Numerical Responses

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 Hints & Tips on Numerical Responses
• Most of the problems will require numerical responses. If so,
please use the following rules:
– Use a period symbol (.) to designate a decimal point (not a comma)
– Never enter commas or any other notation to separate thousands (e.g.
enter 12340 rather than 12,340)
– Never enter currency or percentage signs
– We will ALWAYS allow for some tolerance in numerical problems.
– If it is a multi-part problem, always check the solution of the previous
part to see if we tell you a specific number to use going forward (this
limits error propagation).
– We will always provide guidance on how many decimal places to use
or the number of significant digits to use.
• General rule for rounding (in this example) to no decimal places:
– For x.0 to x.499999 round down to x
– For x.50 to x.999999 round up to x+1
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 Rounding Examples
• Question:
– What is the area of a circle with a radius of 5.62 miles?
• Raw Answer from calculator:
– Since A=πr2, the Area = (3.14159)(5.62)2 = 99.225235196
• Answer under different rounding rules:
– Round to nearest integer (0 decimal places) = 99
– Round to nearest 1 decimal places = 99.2
– Round to nearest 2 decimal places = 99.23
– Round to nearest 3 decimal places = 99.225
– Round Up to nearest integer = 100
– Round Down to nearest integer = 99

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MITx Academic Honesty Policy

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 Academic Honesty Policy
As an edX student, you have certified that all work for grade (Graded Assignments
and Final Exams) is your own work and only your own work. This means that for all
work for grade:
1. You will not submit the work of any other person or have anyone else submit work under your
name,
2. You will maintain only one user account and not let anyone else use your username and/or
password. Having two active user accounts in this course will constitute cheating.
3. You will not collaborate with anyone other than staff on work for grade. This means no
comparing answers, working as teams, or sharing answers in any way for graded work. We
allow and encourage collaboration for Practice Problems and Quick Questions but do not
tolerate it on any of the graded assignments.
We continuously monitor for suspicious activity. We will take action (remove
credit, not award or revoke a certificate, ban from any and all SCx courses as well as
notify edX for other actions) immediately as appropriate.
We take academic honesty very very seriously at MIT. With the introduction of the
MicroMaster's Credential, the importance of honesty in work has been elevated to a
much higher level than before. We will diligently monitor this and be very proactive.
So please, do your own work.
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How to Get Around
SCx Classes
Chris Caplice