Many exercises

You'll do a lot of exercises.

I hear you. I had classes like that when I was a student. They hurt!

One reason you'll be doing lots of exercises is so they can get more difficult slowly. Each one is only a little harder than the one before. By the end of the course, you'll be able to do Great Things, but you'll get there one small step at a time.

First exercise

Let's get started on your first exercise. Here's what it will look like:

You'll submit a joke, and a picture of an animal.

When you click the "Submit solution" button, a new window will open (you may need to give your browser permission). There are different things you'll fill in:

Let's go over it.

Initial your work

At the top of the form, you'll type in your initials.

This says that you are complying with course policies to the best of your knowledge. For example, that you didn't just take someone else's work, and put your name on it.

This claim has legal force in some places. If you claim that your submission is your work, and it isn't, you've committed academic fraud. You can check the policies.

This site checks the initials you type against the data in your account. Suppose your account info looks like this:

The initials on your submissions would have to be SD. If your initials aren't right, change them now (hint: right-click or long-press the link, and you can open your account info in a new browser tab). You can include a middle initial. For example, if your name is Sarah Smith, your initials can be SJS.

The joke

OK, back to the exercise submission form. The next field is where you type your joke.

Most exercises just want a URL here. This exercise wants you to type a joke.

The animal picture

The next field is for uploading files. This is where you'll upload your cute animal picture.

You can see that there are limits on how many files you can upload, how big they can be, and what types they can be. You can upload JPG and PNG files, so your animal photo must be one of those file types. (It almost certainly is.)

BTW, your website might not have the same restrictions as in the screen shot. Check when you upload your file, in a moment.

Difficulty

There are two fields where you tell the website how difficult the exercise was for you.

Click on the difficulty range, from "Very easy" to "Very hard." You can click between the tick marks, like between "Hard" and "Somewhat hard."

If you want, you can say what made the exercise easy or hard, in the "Difficulty reasons" field.

It helps me to check the exercises, that they're not too easy, or too hard, for that point in the course.

Also, if you explain why an exercise was too hard (say), maybe I can improve the explanations on this site. This textbook-like-thing can get better and better. This is sometimes called continuous improvement.

Ha! Good try. No, it won't change anything for you, but it might change the exercises that future students see. Think of this as a way of paying it forward.

Just be honest. If you can explain why you gave your rating, that would help me even more.

Save it

The last thing at the bottom is the Submit button. Click that to save your work.

Your turn

Do this exercise now.

Feedback

That's in the next lesson.