Fall '26 Week 1
Resources
Video Script
Hello, and welcome to the week one announcements video for CIS 527 and CC Fall 10 in fall 2026. Once again, my name is Russ Feldhausen. I’ll be your instructor for the semester. Um, maybe at this point you’ve watched the course introduction video. I just got done recording that. Um, that video is scripted for the most part, and so you’ll get a more robotic version of me in that video. Um, these announcements videos are not scripted. Um, all I do is I write my slides ahead of time, and then I work my way through the slides. So you’ll see a little bit more authentic version of me in these announcements. Um, I highly, highly recommend watching these announcements every time I post them because they have the most recent information and the things that are front of mind for me as I’m going through this class. So if you have any questions for me, feel free to reach out anytime. My email is here. Uh, you can find me on Ed Discussion, on Teams, on Discord. I’m pretty easy to get a hold of, uh, especially because I work from home most of the time. Uh, so feel free to reach out anytime if you have any questions.
I also have one teaching assistant this semester, uh, Sicheng Chen. Uh, Sicheng is a new teaching assistant to this course, but he’ll be getting up to speed over the next few semesters. Uh, and you’ll probably interact with Sicheng, uh, as you go through getting some of your labs graded. Um, so feel free to reach out, but if you see Sicheng, uh, posting on anything, uh, he’s one of my TAs that’s helping out with this course.
So like I talk about in the, uh, introductory module, this course is, uh, gated modules on Canvas. There’s one module due every other week. There’s seven modules in total plus a final project at the end. Uh, the due dates all should be current for everything throughout the class through the semester, so you can pretty much set your calendars at this point. Uh, I don’t anticipate moving too much on the course right now. Um, for lab assignments in this course, big thing you need to know is we do live grading for the lab assignments, which means you will join a Zoom, share your screen, and we will walk you through the things we want to see as you’re grading the lab assignments. Um, we expect you to be able to demonstrate the things we ask you to do. Um, for example, the first lab, I’m going to ask you to show me that you created the user accounts you’re supposed to create. You should know on your computer where to go to show us that, that you did that step, things like that. Um, other big thing we do in this class is discussions. Uh, I try and bring in a few guest speakers every semester. I’ve got four scheduled right now, and I’m still waiting on the fifth one to get back to me to get a date locked in. Um, but I will post that as soon as I have that. Um, for these discussion sessions, and I’ll talk about them more as we get closer to that, um, basically, uh, you will have a week ahead of time to read their bio on LinkedIn and prepare some questions you’d like to ask that person. Um, then we’ll have a live session on Zoom. I really want everybody to attend the live session on Zoom if you can, but I know that it may or may not work in your schedule. And so either attend the live session in Zoom and ask your question there and you get points, or afterward you can write a response to that after you watch the video, and the response will be the proof that you watched the video.
And then lastly, there’s a final project. It’s posted right up front. You can start reading it right now. I encourage you to be thinking about the final project as you go through this class. Uh, but most students start really working on the final project as we get toward November. So don’t worry about it too much right now. Um, like I said, for this course, we use Ed Discussion. That’s probably the best place to get help in this course. I will try and be pretty active on there. Um, you might see me posting some random news articles and things that I come up with. Uh, and I’ll probably create some mega threads out there for different lab assignments, so it’s a great place to get help. Um, anything that’s not course-related or if you have a grading or to-do thing or something that shouldn’t go in Ed Discussion, um, please email the help address. It’s res, uh, cis527-help@ that long address. Uh, if you’re in webmail, any of the K-State email systems, and type cis527-help, it will auto-complete that for you, which is great. Um, I always tell students email is official. Ed Discussion is much more flexible for this course, so that’s why we like to use that. So big thing about this course.
To be successful in this course, you need to come in with a growth mindset. Um, this is a system administration course, and it’s particularly difficult to teach because if I tell you how to do everything that you’re supposed to do, then the lab assignments become very trivial. And so instead, I tend to give you a desired outcome for the lab assignment, and then it is up to you to read the documentation, read the resources that are available to you, and use your brains to figure out how to achieve that outcome. Um, in this course, every page has a lot of links. Those links are important. Those are the links I used when I was creating a lot of this course content, and it usually has a lot of tips and tricks to complete the assignments buried in the links. So don’t expect my textbook to have everything that you need in it. You really need to go back and read the documentation, read the tutorials, um, work through that process. Um, that’s really a lot of what you do as a sysadmin. There’s not one manual that tells you how to do everything. You have to put all of these things together. Um, another big thing in the labs, work iteratively. Um, the labs can take anywhere from one to six hours plus to work through. Um, so don’t try and do the lab all in one shot. Don’t be like, “Oh, Friday, the lab’s due tomorrow. I’m gonna start working on the lab today.” Um, there is a reason that I give you two weeks to work through the labs. Um, I can work through the labs in about an hour each because I have a lot of experience, and I’ve done this before. Uh, most new students that don’t have experience tell me it takes about six hours to do some of these labs. Um, and then the other big thing about this class is I do not expect anybody to make it through this class without asking for help at least once. Um, there are times where something’s not gonna make sense, or you will break something in a way that you can’t fix it, and you need to work with me or Sicheng to get that fixed. And every semester, there are one or two students that manage to break things in a way that I can’t figure out how to fix it either. And, um, so the other big thing is save early and save often. Um, the VM software that we use has snapshots. Think of those as quick saves if you’re a gamer. Um, anytime you’re gonna do something that you’re like, “I don’t know if I’m gonna do this right,” quick save before you try it so that you have something you can roll back to. Um, don’t be the student that learns the lesson the hard way that you get to rebuild your VMs from scratch because you broke something. But every semester that happens, so be warned.
Like I talked about before, lab grading, uh, you’re gonna schedule. It says Calendly. I have switched to Microsoft Bookings for me. I don’t know what Sicheng’s gonna use yet. Um, when you’re scheduling lab grading, check Sicheng’s schedule first and schedule with him if he’s available. Um, if he’s not available, then check my schedule. I will mostly be available Tuesdays and Thursdays in the afternoons, I think, but I’m still working on my semester schedule. Um, you can schedule your grading time before you have finished the lab. So if you’re working on the lab and know you’re going to be done at a certain point, you can schedule your grading time. Just make sure you’re done with the lab before your grading time starts. Um, other big thing to be aware of, my calendar requires at least four hours advance notice to schedule a meeting with me. So if you get done on Wednesday afternoon at 3:00, don’t expect that you can schedule a meeting at Wednesday afternoon at 4:30. Um, that just prevents things from showing up on my calendar last minute while I’m trying to work on stuff. Um, and then the other big thing about lab grading is when we start the lab grading process, you can’t make any changes once we start. Um, so if you open up a text file and be like, “Oh, crap, I, I missed that,” it’s already too late. We’re grading it. Um, but we will work with you to fix things that we find once we’re done with the grading, so be prepared for that.
Talked about discussions already. Um, like I said, you submit questions online, uh, participate or write responses. Uh, the first discussion will be coming up here in, uh, early September. I believe the first one is, uh, Seth Galitzer, who is our former CSS admin. Great person to talk to. He’s talked in this class almost every semester I’ve taught it. Um, so you can go back and watch some of the old videos from Seth, but I’m really excited to get him to come in and talk about his experience now that he’s moved into engineering support and has a little bit different role within the department. Um, so I’m really excited about some of the discussions we have coming up, so look forward to those this semester.
Other big new thing this semester is I have adopted a generative AI policy. Um, generative AI was not necessarily an issue the last time I taught this class, which was in fall 2025, but I want to get out ahead of this and make sure that everybody knows what my expectation is. Um, in general, most of this class is going to be in the yellow category, which means you’re totally allowed to ask gen AI questions. I mean, every Google search at this point is a gen AI prompt. Um, but what I don’t want you to do is h- is be like, “Hey, gen AI, write me a Biden config file for this thing.” Um, you can ask it questions, but I want you to actually go through the process of building the configuration files, doing the steps, making things work. Um, don’t just have AI do it for you because you’re not learning anything by that. You’re just being like, “Oh, AI can make this file.” And then, of course, if something is wrong, you won’t know why or what’s wrong. So that’s the general idea behind gen AI.
As far as my use of gen AI, I do not believe in using gen AI whenever I’m communicating with somebody, and so any email that you get from me, any of these announcements videos, that is all me. That is my voice. That is exactly, uh, my text. It is written by me. Um, so any communication you get from me will be no gen AI whatsoever. Um, any grades that you get will not be gen AI. Any grading feedback you get, that will not be gen AI. Um, I do reserve the right to use gen AI for code review and feedback of large projects. Um, that’s not really a thing in this course. It’s mostly targeted things like senior project where I get, you know, 20 or 30 students that have these huge senior projects. I may use gen AI to review those. I don’t anticipate needing that in this course. Um, and then I do, uh, reserve the right to use gen AI to produ- produce learning content. Uh, mostly it’d be graphics and situations and things for lessons that we might do in the future. Um, but as of right now, I have not used gen AI at all in this course. There’s no gen AI content present, and if there is any gen AI content in the future, it will be clearly marked. You’ll be able to see it. But, um, rest assured that any email you get from me, any communication from me, any videos from me, that is pure me. That is exactly what you’re getting. Um, I believe that I’m your instructor, and you’re paying for my interactions and my expertise, and so that’s what I’m going to give to you.
So last big thing this semester, um, feel free to keep in touch. I will post in the discussion. I’m available on Teams and Discord. Uh, we’re gonna try and have some tee time office hours in the semester. Uh, if you’re not familiar with tee time, it’s an open office hours period where you can come in and talk about life, the universe, and anything that’s bothering you. Um, I’m a big believer that college is not just the classes you take, but the experiences and the life things that you can learn along the way. And so I am more than willing to offer up my life experiences and my advice and my ability to work with students if you have any questions about anything that you want to know. Uh, and a lot of other CS faculty and advisors feel the same way. And so we’re going to try and have some open office hours where we can have those types of discussions, which I think are a really valuable experience in college. Um, and then of course, you can always schedule one-on-one office hours with me. My calendar is available. You can schedule with me anytime during the working day, or, uh, if you work a particular schedule and need time on nights and weekends, just email me and let me know. I’m happy to meet your schedule as long as I can. Um, just know to make those requests in advance, but, um, I’m happy to do that.
So that’s all I’ve got on my mind right now. This first announcements video is usually the longest one in the semester, um, but it’s a good chance for me to just talk through anything that’s going, uh, through my mind right now. Uh, I’m working on this about a week before class starts, so hopefully all of this is still current by the next time you see it. Um, the only big thing I haven’t done yet is finish up the CourseDog syllabus for this course, but it’s gonna have the same content that the old syllabus had. So, um, hopefully I shouldn’t run into any problems with that. Um, otherwise, good luck this semester, and I look forward to seeing all of you in the class this semester. Uh, you’ll probably get weekly announcements from me at least every other week, probably every week, depending on how things go. Um, but best of luck, and I will see you again soon.