New for Fall 2024

An executive summary of updates to the ESaaS course materials for 2024:

• Virtually all of the lecture videos have been re-recorded during Fall 2023, though there are a few gaps. We've updated the YouTube playlist in this instructor's guide (see left) with links to the new videos.

• The Codio-based CHIPS are being updated to work with Codio's new "Guides" format (the in-IDE textbook) and are being updated to Rails 7 and Ruby 3 (thanks to Jairo Velasquez at Codio!), and the accompanying documentation in both GitHub and Codio updated. Instructors who use Codio should receive notifications of these updates from Codio so they can apply them to their individual courses.

• We have moved virtually all of the non-coding-intensive exercises (quizzes, homeworks, exams) to PrairieLearn. Read the details and get access to these materials. Some of the PrairieLearn exercises make use of Faded Parsons Problems, invented by UC Berkeley PhD student Nate Weinman in 2021, which provide a well-defined intermediate exercise type between code comprehension (code-reading) and code-writing. FPPs involve shorter programming tasks than the Codio CHIPS, but still exercise knowledge of programming. We'll be adding more self-check questions and novel exercises in PrairieLearn format. Note that the "Exercises for Flipped Classroom" and "Additional Materials" at left continue to be available, and we will update those repositories with more flipped-classroom worksheets as we create them. Contributions are welcome!

• There is a new CHIPS 8.5 that is not based on Codio but instead uses Faded Parsons Problems to provide a "kinder, gentler" introduction to RSpec test writing; it's gone through two pilot cycles locally and has been very well received, so we'll be creating more like it. If you get access to the above PrairieLearn materials you'll have access to this CHIPS as well.

• You can now download the newest release of the book (current version 2.0b8, which is also packaged in Codio now). A notable improvement is a list of competencies at the end of every book section that define specific skills students should be able to demonstrate based on the material in that chapter. Some of these competencies are linked directly to PrairieLearn exercises that test them, so if you get access to the PrairieLearn materials as above and are using PrairieLearn in the course, you could put these questions directly on quizzes or homeworks. Others are exercised in the CHIPS. The long term goal is to provide one or more PrairieLearn or CHIPS exercises for every competency.

• There's a new "SaaS In the News" page on this site (see left)where I'm collecting one-line summaries of news articles or videos related to the course topics, organized roughly by chapter. A few of these are "evergreen" topics and others are specific incidents relevant to course content.

Any and all contributions to the materials are welcome; email me to learn more!