Jin Zhao

Jin Zhao

Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Saint Louis University

In-class questions — setup & run guide

In-class questions — setup & run guide

Live polling for CSCI 4750/5750. Students answer on their phones; the answer distribution (multiple choice) or a wall of anonymous responses (free text) appears on the projector in real time. Same app as CSCI 4845/5845.

  • Students: https://jinzhao3611.github.io/csci4750/q/
  • Presenter (you): https://jinzhao3611.github.io/csci4750/q/present.html

Hosting is GitHub Pages; the live data layer is Firebase Firestore.

Setup: already done

This course reuses the Firebase project created for CSCI 4845/5845 (csci4845-poll). firebase-config.js here differs from the NLP copy only in COURSE = "csci4750-s27" and the student URL. Every Firestore document lives under courses/{COURSE}/, so this course’s questions, live state, and responses are separate from the NLP course’s, and the published rules (firestore.rules, identical to the NLP copy) already cover it. The domain jinzhao3611.github.io is already authorized. Nothing to do in the Firebase console.

If you ever want a separate project instead, follow the one-time steps in ../../csci4845/q/SETUP.md and paste the new values into firebase-config.js.

Before the first class (Mon Jan 11): open present.html, sign in with Google, click Add question set…, paste the contents of lectures/lecture01/CSCI-4750-2027-Lecture-01-Questions.txt from the course folder (the background survey), and click Add set. Do the same for the other lectures whenever convenient — every lecture folder has a ...-Questions.txt paste file (set: lec02 … set: lec38, plus set: studio for the Mar 1 project studio).

Running it in class

  1. Once per lecture: open present.html, sign in, pick the day’s set in the dropdown, and click Make “lecNN” live for students. The set stays live until you make the next one live — there is nothing to close — and each student gets one submission per question (no changes after submitting).
  2. Leave the presenter page on the projector during the first ~5 minutes: it shows every question in the set with its live distribution or response wall, all updating in real time, next to the QR code students scan.
  3. Students work through the set at their own pace with Back/Next on their phones; each student’s page starts at their first unanswered question.
  4. For grading and attendance: Export responses CSV — one row per answer with timestamp, set, question, name, email, and answer. Attendance per session = the distinct emails for that set. This course allows up to 6 missed sessions without penalty (42 meetings).

Notes

  • Students identify themselves once with name + SLU email, stored in their browser, so later classes are one tap. Answers are recorded per student for participation credit; free-text answers are shown on screen without names.
  • One submission per question, enforced by the database rules — after submitting, an answer is locked; the student sees it alongside the live results. (A mis-tap is protected by an explicit Submit button.)
  • Late joiners can still answer — the set stays open; the exports’ timestamps show who answered when.
  • Results appear only on the presenter/projector screen — student devices never show the distribution, and the database rules only let each student read their own responses.

Paste format

set: lec02
mc: Which k gives the smoothest k-NN decision boundary?
- k = 1
- k = 5
- k = 50
note: Think about how many points vote.
multi: Which of these have you used? (select all that apply)
- NumPy
- scikit-learn
text: One thing from Monday that is still unclear?

mc: is single choice, multi: is select-all-that-apply (both take - choice lines), text: is free text. An optional note: line right after a question adds a small hint under its prompt. A line with no prefix continues the previous line. Ids and order are automatic (lec02-q1, lec02-q2, … top to bottom). Re-adding a set name overwrites its questions — fine for fixing typos, but don’t reorder MC choices after students have answered (answers store the choice index), and if you shrink a set, delete the leftover question docs in the Firebase console (Firestore → Data → courses → csci4750-s27 → questions).

The answers to each set are in the instructor-only ...-Question-Key.md next to it in the course folder — never paste those.