Web Real-Time Communications: Course Policies

From the Catalog: This course covers a set of protocols, architectures, and APIs designed to enable browser-to-browser real-time communication of voice, video, and data. Students will learn to apply basic technologies including WebSockets, HTTP, HTML5, Web Sockets, NAT, STUN, TURN, and ICE to ensure two-way real-time communication is established using the WebRTC APIs and architectures. Students will use JavaScript and development environments to create basic data and media applications based on the WebRTC technologies and will record the impact of their applications on the performance and behavior of the networks that carry them.

Extended Description: The course’s preferred development methods will require students to create and maintain testing suites and other automated quality-assurance measures. Students will also immerse themselves in some of the core values of the class: appropriately scoped features, progressive enhancement, expertly crafted commits, semantic versioning, rigorous code reviews, automated builds, continuous integration/continuous deployment, accurate code-adjacent documentation, and a healthy suspicion and pessimistic view of frameworks, libraries, and other dependencies in production.

There are no books required for this course. The existing titles on WebRTC are several years old, and do not reflect the complete contents of the WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers specification, which reached Candidate Recommendation status in December 2019.

We will instead read widely from industry and academic sources, which are linked from the course calendar.

I make it my very top priority to create courses that are welcoming and accessible to all students. I will make additional reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities. In order to receive accommodations, students must obtain a letter of accommodation from the Center for Disability Resources. The Center for Disability Resources is located in IIT Tower, 3424 S. State Street - 3F3-1 (third floor, in the northwest corner across from the Student Health and Wellness Center). Contact the Center by telephone at 312-567-5744, by TDD at 312-567-5135, or via email at disabilities@iit.edu

Students who have any difficulty, either permanent or temporary, that might affect their ability to successfully participate in and complete the class should contact me privately, either in person or electronically, at the start of the semester or as a difficulty arises. That includes difficulties with housing, internet access, and anything that otherwise compromises your sense of safety, security, and support—especially if it impacts your ability to complete this class. Please reach out.

I will adjust methods, materials, or deadlines as necessary to ensure equitable participation for all students.

Mental Health and Well-Being

It’s no secret that attending school while managing and balancing other life concerns is incredibly stressful and at times completely overwhelming. And that’s when there’s not a global pandemic raging, disrupting all aspects of our lives. All of us, no matter how outwardly strong, successful, or put-together we might appear, struggle sometimes.

Illinois Tech provides all students with a variety of free counseling services. I encourage all students to seek support and help from the Counseling Services unit of the Student Health and Wellness Center. Students facing a crisis situation, especially outside of the Counseling Services unit’s operating hours, may wish to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. The Student Health and Wellness Center maintains a list of other emergency resources worth bookmarking.

Your timely submission of work and active participation in the electronic discussions for this class are required both for your own success and for the success of the class as a whole. I do not squander students’ time with reading quizzes, but I do assign a lot of reading. And I expect you to be prepared to discuss that reading on Basecamp by quoting or making direct references to each week’s assigned reading.

Additionally, you should be posting to Basecamp about your individual and group progress, questions, and challenges as you complete the course’s major projects.

Students intending to earn an A for Participation should be posting substantively on the Discussion & Announcements Basecamp five times or more per week, with contributions appearing multiple days per week, all semester long. Students earning a B will post three to five times, and students earning a C will post two times, every week. Fewer than an average of two discussion contributions per week will result in a failing Participation grade. (While you are certainly encouraged to post to the Social Hour Basecamp, that activity does not affect your participation grade.)

Attendance at live class meetings does not impact your participation grade, but I do hope that everyone who is able joins those meetings.

If you are able to attend our class meetings on Google Meet, here are just a few simple guidelines:

• You do not have to broadcast your camera. For any reason. The choice is yours. It’s helpful for me to be able to glance at faces and see how everyone is reacting, but it’s totally up to you whether to broadcast your camera or not.
• Please mute your mic if you’re not speaking. Self-explanatory. Muted mics cut down on ambient noise and occasional echo that can be real problems for people who have hearing difficulties. I encourage you to turn on the live closed captioning when we’re in Google Meet.
• Neither you nor our Meet room will appear in videos. I will always teach class with our Google Meet room on a second screen that will not be recorded. If you opt to speak, your voice will be in the video, of course. But you also have the option of messaging in the Meet room by text; I will keep an eye on that as class is going, in case you wish to raise questions or ask for clarification that way.
• All class meetings will be posted to YouTube. You’ll be able to watch class on your own time if you’re unable to attend the live class. I have some pretty cool tricks for helping to index the videos on YouTube, too, if you need to go back and find and rewatch something. Again, I will take great care not to accidentally record our chat room. I will share a playlist link for all of our videos on Basecamp and on the course website.
• If my Internet connection fails, I will still record and post class. That kind of thing does happen: sometimes before class, sometimes during. If I’ve got Internet troubles, I’ll post to Basecamp from my phone and let everyone know what’s going on.

All major projects for this course will be submitted via Basecamp for instructor and peer feedback. Certain deliverables, such as critiques of team members, will be submitted separately via email. See each major project’s description for exact submission instructions.

Weekly work will be pushed to GitHub and posted about on Basecamp, as described in the weekly work’s instructions.

All work must be submitted before the date and time specified in each project description. Weekly work is due by the start of the first class meeting each week. The deadlines in this class, including for draft work, are no different from exam dates in classes that have exams. I expect you to do your best to treat them accordingly. If you believe you are in danger of missing a deadline, be sure to contact me well ahead of time so we can work something out.

Technology is an essential part of learning and day-to-day living. It is therefore essential to this class. You are just as responsible for learning to command various technologies as for any other course content. Difficulty with technology is not an acceptable excuse for being unprepared for class or for incomplete assignments.

If you are having trouble with technology or any other material covered in this course, it is your professional responsibility to do research beyond the resources and guidance provided in class and find supplemental materials that work for you. I also encourage all students to contact me during my office hours or at another arranged time. I prefer that you contact me via Basecamp Ping or email well in advance of assignment and project deadlines. I want everyone in here to succeed, but each of you has to take the first step and reach out for help.

Also, I have asked you to sign up for a GitHub account for this class. Note that GitHub accounts are public, as are most social-type accounts. To protect your privacy you are certainly allowed to use a pseudonym/alias for GitHub and any other account. That being said, you might want to think about the high value of establishing GitHub and other accounts under your own name or professional alias. Public accounts where you conduct yourself professionally might well be an asset to your online presence, improving the search results that future schools or employers turn up when they look for you on Google and elsewhere.

As with any course at IIT, you are expected to uphold the Code of Academic Honesty as described in the IIT Student Handbook. All work for this course must be your own original effort, including print and digital page design and computer code. Summarizations and quotations of text, as well as any use of open-source code libraries and images not of your own making, should be clearly cited as legally and ethically warranted and rhetorically appropriate. Access, storage, dissemination, and other use of data from third-party sources must conform to the source’s terms of service, licensing, and other relevant legal and ethical restrictions.

If you are at all uncertain as to whether you are submitting work that in whole or in part may violate the Code of Academic Honesty, please contact me immediately and before the work is due. The consequences of academic dishonesty are severe. Any student who violates the Code of Academic Honesty will be subject to expulsion from this course with a failing grade, and I will report the student to the Chair of the Information Technology and Management Department, who may take additional disciplinary action, including reporting violations to the relevant offices of Undergraduate or Graduate Academic Affairs.