Communication

One of the more difficult things needed to run a class of hundreds of students is managing communication. Fortunately it’s easy to manage if we use the technology efficiently. There are three primary ways of communicating with course staff:

• Office hours
• CampusWire
• Email

Office Hours

We will have an Office Hours Schedule updated on the second week of class. It’s best if you arrive toward the beginning of the session.

CampusWire

You are probably familiar with it. This is a general question-and-answer forum. You may ask questions here and remain anonymous to your fellow students, but the course staff will see your real name. We will also make urgent announcements here (e.g. if we have to cancel class); though we will copy that message via email.

The forum is the place to go for questions about content and for setting up your coding environment. It might be okay for code related questions, but these are better handled in office hours.

Etiquette

• Of course, we expect and require everyone to follow the Code of Conduct. (Short version: don’t be a jerk.)
• The strength of a forum is that if you have a question, odds are strong that others have the same question. Even better, there’s always a few students in the class who get a bigger adrenaline rush answering questions on the forum than most people get from 1000 likes on TikTok. Therefore you should do these three things:
  • Always search before posting --- Be sure your question hasn’t already been asked or answered.
  • Make your post public --- If you are not asking about your grades or something that needs to be kept private, you must make your post public. A forum loses its purpose for existing if you make a question visible only to the instructors, and the TAs are instructed to not answer such posts. You can be anonymous to the other classmates if you want.
  • Be clear about what you are asking
    • If you are getting an error describe best you can what you did before the error happened and what the error message was.
    • If you are having trouble with a homework or MP, tell us exactly which question.
• Don’t post code. If you have code questions, you should use office hours for that.

Joining

Invitation Link: https://campuswire.com/p/GD13D08D5 Code: 5249

Good Reasons to Email the Prof

There are hundreds of you, and only one instructor. If everyone sends an email the system will bog down. This is the purpose of campuswire and office hours. However, there are situations where emailing the instructor is a good idea.

• Let the professor know of an emergency situation that prevents you from fully taking part in the class. (We’re talking about things covered by the student code, like hospital trips, family emergencies, and the like.)
• If you miss your exam or know that you will miss it. It happens, and we usually will give you another opportunity if you tell us right away.
• You have a concern about your grade or performance in the course. Please email the instructor and arrange a meeting if you think you are falling behind. We want you to succeed!
• If you have something coming up like travel and need to make arrangements for missed work.

Bad Reasons to Email the Prof

• Do not ask for extensions; all assignments have an automatic 80% extension to allow you a little flexibility in your time management. Daily activity type things will get two days of auto-extension, and MPs will get one week. If there’s an emergency that goes beyond time management issues then do get in touch.
• Do not email asking for a policy to be changed just for you. We sometimes have a student realize half way through the course that they are not doing well and then ask if they can turn in all the assignments they missed at the beginning of the semester. We can’t give you special privileges like that. (Again, we are not talking about emergencies and pre-made special arrangements.)
• Do not ask for your grade to be rounded up at the end of the term. I’ve been a fraction of a point on the wrong side of a grade cutoff myself, so I know how irritating it is, but in a class this size there will be dozens of students in the same situation. If we rounded grades, we’re really just lowering the cutoff a bit, and now different students will be in the “just missed by 0.03 points” kind of situation.

As a professor I can easily get 100 emails in a day; expect 24 hours for a reply during M-F, and do not expect a reply over the weekend (though I often answer emails then too.)