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
- Discord
Office Hours
Office hours are held after class and on Monday during the class session. (Most Mondays are set aside for coding practice and to work together solving the problems.)
Discord
You are probably familiar with it. Please set up an account here, if you dont already have one. Discord is a messaging platform. You may communicate with course staff/classmates here, and are encouraged to ask questions!
Etiquette
- Of course, we expect and require everyone to follow the Code of Conduct.
- The strength of a forum is that if you have a question, odds are strong that others have the same question. Therefore you should do these three things:
- Always search before posting
- 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, tell us exactly which question.
- Don’t post code. If you have code questions, you should use office hours for that.
Joining
Invitation Link: here
Good Reasons to Email the Prof
There are hundreds of you (well, not in this class, but in other classes I teach alongside this one), 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 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.)