Whiteboard Discussions

CS 1670 this semester will complement lectures and implementation projects with regular whiteboard discussions. These are small-group discussions (about three students, one staff member) that review conceptual material and explore ideas related to recent assignments and course material. Whiteboard discussions are mandatory and form a part of your grade.

tl;dr: summary

• Groups of three students will have 45-minute whiteboard discussions with a course staff member, about 6-7 times during the semester.
• No laptop use during the discussions; the focus is on discussion with other humans and use of the whiteboard may be required.
• Assessment is by course instructors based on an objective report compiled by your discussion lead. There are no rubrics or pre-set questions, although you should expect to be asked to explain topics on the whiteboard. Good performance can be driven by questions and thoroughly exploring ideas and does not require a perfect understanding of the material.

Why are we doing this?

Whiteboard discussions are part of a broader effort across CS courses to have students spend more face time with course staff. We believe that this is a good idea for four reasons:

1. Talking about a topic to another human is well known to be one of the most effective ways of learning. By engaging in an interactive back-and-forth conversation, you gain a deeper understanding, find blind spots, and get answers to your questions.
2. The course lets you use AI tools for the assignments, but using these tools can (even unintentionally) harm your learning. Whiteboard discussions provide a technology-free room to ensure that you’re on top of the material, and give us an indication that you did the thinking for the assignments yourself.
3. AI has made traditional TA office hours focused on debugging help largely redundant, and we want to replace them with a meaningful way of interacting with the course staff on a regular basis that further helps you learn.
4. Discussing with others helps you develop your technical communication skills. Developing an operating system not only requires coding and technical skills, but also a ton of communication with other humans. Being able to explain your ideas clearly to others and building that skill is even more important in the professional world now that AI is replacing some coding work.

Whiteboard discussions are inspired by a very old mode of teaching: the tutorial system at the British universities of Cambridge and Oxford. In this system, a student spends an hour each week talking to an experienced academic (the “tutor” or “supervisor”). This allows students to get answers to their questions, to check their own understanding, and provides an incentive to stay on top of things. Funnily enough, this centuries-old system has weathered AI much better than many other pedagogical approaches!

How will whiteboard discussions work?

Each whiteboard discussion will take about 45 minutes and focus broadly on recent course content, including assignments that were due recently. Your discussion will be led by a course staff member (a TA or an instructor) and you’ll meet in a group of three students, which will remain the same throughout the semester. The goal is to discuss material in a technology-free environment, which means that you won’t open your laptop but focus on the discussion and the other humans in the room.

The goal is to develop your conceptual understanding of the material, so the discussions will engage with concepts rather than code details. Your discussion lead will have some prepared discussion topics, but do ask your own questions—that is what the discussions are for.

After the discussion, the course staff member leading the discussion will document what happened with a brief, objective report and a picture of the whiteboard and any other visuals created. All grading is done by course instructors; your whiteboard discussion lead will not grade you.

Are whiteboard discussions code reviews?

No. Whiteboard discussions aren’t primarily about your code, and our goal is not to check if you wrote your own code. Instead, we want to give you an incentive and opportunity to develop your conceptual understanding of the ideas in the course, and to receive timely feedback on how you are doing.

In the age of AI, code is cheap and human effort increasingly focuses on higher-level questions (i.e., the “why?” or “why this way?” rather than just the “how?”). This means conceptual understanding is critical: it’s what allows you to leverage AI effectively, assess its output to tell slop from good solutions, and forms the foundation for a decades-long career independent of how code gets written in the future.

How will I be graded?

Whiteboard discussions combine instruction and assessment: you explain your recent work, solve transfer tasks where you apply ideas you’ve seen in one context to another problem, and reason through unfamiliar problems in real time. This means that in order to do well, you don’t need to know everything or answer questions perfectly—instead, you might ask insightful questions of your own, or contribute your own half-baked ideas. Indeed, the point isn’t to ‘get it right’, but to demonstrate that you can inquire about concepts and work with them!

We highly encourage you to use visual aids and draw on the whiteboard, and the discussion lead might require you to do so.

Based on the report and whiteboard picture, the instructor will give you a grade on our honest grading scale. In doing so, they will be looking for three things:

1. Evidence that you actively participated in the discussion (i.e., you said things).
2. Evidence of existing or developing conceptual understanding of the topics at hand.
3. Evidence of the ability to engage around work you completed previously for the course, including explaining your choices to others and adapting your approach based on new scenarios that come up in the whiteboard discussion.

All grading will be done by the class instructors, who have a global view of the class, rather than by TAs.

FAQs

What are some things to do in order to do well in a whiteboard discussion?

Good question! First, be prepared: you should know the material you recently worked on and reviewing it won’t hurt. Second, be an engaged participant in the discussion: speak up, ask questions when you’re confused, and explain topics with the aid of the whiteboard to your peers and discussion lead. If you get lost or confused, ask questions! The discussion lead is there to help you learn, and asking questions is a great way to do that (and asking good questions will never harm your grade). Finally, be open to exploring ideas and thinking out loud: you don’t need to have all the answers, but you should be willing to engage with the material and your peers.

What are some things that will make me do poorly in a whiteboard discussion?

If you sit there saying nothing, have no questions, and wait for the discussion lead to pull answers out of your nose, or use technology when you’re not supposed to, your learning outcome and grade will be poor. Equally, if you dominate the other students or harm their opportunity to learn, you also won’t do well.

Why can I not use my laptop? I want to be able to look things up during the whiteboard discussion.

We want you to focus on the discussion. We won’t ask you recall questions or test your memory; instead, the discussion lead will be happy to answer questions if you can’t remember something that you’d otherwise look up.

What if I have to miss a whiteboard discussion (due to sickness, unavoidable time conflicts, etc.)?

The other students in your group will have their discussion without you. You’ll sign up for a make-up discussion slot, where you will be paired with other students.

What if I believe the discussion report doesn’t accurately reflect what happened, or I believe that I received an unfair grade?

Reach out to the instructors. You’ll have another 1:1 discussion with an instructor and the grade from that discussion will stand.