Professor's Guide

Overview

This repository holds all course material for SE 423 — lecture slides, lab handouts, homework assignments, and an interactive course website. The key idea is simple: you edit files, push them to GitHub, and everything else happens automatically.

What lives where

How CI Works (The Automatic Pipeline)

"CI" stands for Continuous Integration — it's a robot that runs on GitHub's servers every time you push code. You never have to install LaTeX or PDF tools on your own machine; the robot handles it.

Triggering a full rebuild

By default, CI only recompiles files that changed. To force a complete rebuild of everything (useful after renaming files or fixing a shared header):

1. 1Go to your GitHub repository page
2. 2Click Actions in the top menu
3. 3Click the Build LaTeX PDFs workflow
4. 4Click Run workflow → Run workflow — this rebuilds every file in pdf-list.txt

Forking for Your Own Course

"Forking" means creating your own copy of this repository that you fully control. From that point on, you can change anything without affecting the original SE 423 materials.

\def\CourseCode{ECE 420}
\def\CourseName{Advanced Robotics}

\def\StartDate{2026-01-20}   % Change to your semester start date (YYYY-MM-DD)
\def\HWCheckOffTime{5PM}     % Time students demo work in lab
\def\HWSubmitTime{9AM}       % Time Gradescope submissions are due

Lecture Slides (PPTX)

Lecture slides live in Lectures/Slides/ as PowerPoint files. The CI converts each one to PDF automatically — you don't need to export them yourself.

Adding a new lecture

1. 1Create your slide deck in Microsoft PowerPoint (recommended) or LibreOffice Impress, following the UIUC branding guidelines for colors.
2. 2Name the file following the existing pattern: L1.pptx, L2.pptx, … and place it in Lectures/Slides/.
3. 3Commit and push to main. The CI detects all L*.pptx files automatically — no entry in pdf-list.txt is needed for slides.
4. 4Add a card to the lectures list in site/index.html so it appears on the course hub (see the Website section).

Lab Assignments

Lab handouts are written in LaTeX and compiled to PDF by the CI. If you've never used LaTeX before, read the LaTeX Primer section first, then come back here.

Creating a new lab

Copy this template and save it as Labs/Lab4.tex (or whatever number comes next):

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\def\AssignmentMode{Lab}      % Do not change this for labs
\def\HWNum{4}                 % Lab number
\def\AssignmentText{Brief one-line description of the lab}

\input{header}                % Loads all shared formatting — do not move this line

\begin{document}

\MakeAssignmentTitle          % Prints the gray title box at the top

\section*{Goals for this Lab Assignment}
\begin{itemize}
    \item Goal 1
    \item Goal 2
\end{itemize}

\section*{Laboratory Exercises}

\Ex                           % Exercise 1 (auto-numbered)

Description of the first exercise.

\begin{enumerate}
    \item Step one
    \item Step two
\end{enumerate}

\Ex[Optional title]           % Exercise 2 with a subtitle

Another exercise. Code example:

\begin{minted}{c}
int main(void) {
    // Your C code here
    return 0;
}
\end{minted}

\MakeFooter                   % Prints the reminder box at the bottom
\end{document}

Registering the lab so CI compiles it

Open pdf-list.txt and add a line for your new file:

Labs/Lab4.tex

Homework Assignments

Homework files follow the same LaTeX pattern as labs but use \AssignmentMode{HW} and include accessibility metadata required by UIUC's PDF/UA-2 standard.

Homework template

% This block MUST come first — before \documentclass.
% It enables accessibility tagging in the PDF output.
\ifdefined\HCode\else
\DocumentMetadata{
  testphase = {phase-III, math, table},
  pdfstandard = ua-2,
  lang = en
}
\fi

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\def\AssignmentMode{HW}      % Do not change this for homeworks
\def\HWNum{7}                % Homework number

\input{header}

% \GetDate{weeks}{days} counts from the semester start date defined in timline.tex
\def\AssignmentText{%
  Check-offs due \HWCheckOffTime~\GetDate{8}{1}.
  Gradescope submission due \HWSubmitTime~\GetDate{8}{2}.%
}

\begin{document}
\MakeAssignmentTitle

\Ex[First Problem]

Problem description here. You can use \textbf{bold}, \textit{italics},
or \mintinline{c}{inline code}.

\Ex[Second Problem]

\begin{enumerate}
    \item Part a
    \item Part b
\end{enumerate}

\MakeFooter
\end{document}

Due dates with \GetDate

The \GetDate{weeks}{days} macro counts forward from the \StartDate you set in timline.tex. You never hardcode dates — if the semester shifts, you change \StartDate once and every deadline updates.

Add the new file to pdf-list.txt:

Homeworks/HW7.tex

Figures

Figures in Lectures/Figures/ are automatically converted to SVG and shown in the website's gallery. Each figure gets a modal preview card — no manual steps needed.

Preferred formats (best to worst)

Naming convention

Use lowercase with underscores. The filename becomes the gallery card title.

Using a figure in a LaTeX document

% Always use \AltImg (not plain \includegraphics) for accessibility.
% The third argument is the alt text — describe what the figure shows.
\begin{figure}[H]
\centering
\AltImg[width=0.8\textwidth]{Lectures/Figures/adc_soc_trigger_flow.pdf}{%
    Block diagram showing ADC SOC trigger path from ePWM through
    SOC channel selection to the ADC result register%
}
\caption{ADC SOC trigger flow.}
\end{figure}

Course Website (site/index.html)

The course hub page lists all lectures, labs, and homeworks as clickable cards. This list is not automatically generated from the file system — you must manually update the JavaScript data object inside site/index.html when you add new content.

Adding a homework card

Search for the hw: array in site/index.html and add an entry:

// Inside the data object in site/index.html
hw: [
  // ... existing entries ...
  {
    title: "Homework 7: SLAM",
    file: "Homeworks/HW7.pdf",
    links: [
      { label: "Dataset",   url: "https://example.com/slam-dataset" },
      { label: "Reference", url: "https://example.com/slam-paper"   }
    ]
  },
]

Adding a lecture card

lectures: [
  // ... existing entries ...
  {
    title: "Lecture 24: SLAM",
    basePath: "Lectures/Slides/L24",   // CI creates both L24.pdf and leaves L24.pptx
    topic: "Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, particle filters"
  },
]

Adding an interactive tool

1. 1Create site/my_tool.html as a self-contained HTML page (see color_spaces.html as a reference)
2. 2Add a navigation button in the header of site/index.html linking to it
3. 3Push to main — CI copies the entire site/ directory to the artifacts branch

LaTeX Primer for Beginners

LaTeX is a document preparation system where you write plain text with formatting commands, and it produces a professionally typeset PDF. Think of it like writing HTML, but for documents.

Core concepts

\textbf{bold text}      → bold text
\textit{italic text}    → italic text
\texttt{code font}      → monospace
\url{https://uiuc.edu}  → clickable link

\begin{itemize}          % unordered list
    \item First item
    \item Second item
\end{itemize}

\begin{enumerate}        % numbered list
    \item Step one
    \item Step two
\end{enumerate}

Inline math: $x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$

Display math (centered, on its own line):
\[ F = ma \]

% Inline: short snippet in a sentence
The function \mintinline{c}{int main(void)} starts every program.

% Block: multi-line code
\begin{minted}{c}
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
    printf("Hello, world!\n");
    return 0;
}
\end{minted}

Repo-specific macros you'll use constantly

Formatting rules specific to this repo

Accessibility Requirements

UIUC requires course materials to meet WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards. This repo's CI pipeline automatically handles most of it — but you need to follow a few rules when writing content.

What you must do

% ✓ Correct — includes alt text for screen readers
\AltImg[width=\textwidth]{Labs/Figures/board.jpg}{%
    Top view of the F28379D breakout board with four 2x10 headers
    soldered along the top edge and 18 LEDs in two rows below%
}

% ✗ Wrong — no alt text, fails accessibility check
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{Labs/Figures/board.jpg}

% Wraps the equation with an English description for screen readers
\AltMath{Newton's second law: force equals mass times acceleration}{%
    F = ma
}

Checking your work

• • Run the WebAIM WAVE tool on any HTML page you publish to check for errors
• • For PDFs: open in Adobe Acrobat and run the built-in Accessibility Checker
• • UIUC's accessibility guide: Box link

Quick Reference