Communication Policy

Expectations for Efficiency and Efficacy

Efficient and effective communication is essential to success in CS 307. This document outlines expectations and requirements for communicating with the CS 307 course staff.

So you need to ask a question. Great! What’s the best forum to get your question answered?

First, you should ask yourself some questions about your question.

The answers to these question will help determine which form of communication is most appropriate.

You have a number of communication channels available:

If you have a question about course policy or administration, be sure to first check the course website, including the syllabus and other policy documents. Be aware that there is a search feature! Click the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner!

Lecture and Discussion

You are more than welcome to ask questions during lecture. The best questions during lecture are directly related to the topic being presented. Generally, we will also ask if there are any administrative question before the start of lecture.

Note that we stress that these questions are excellent during lecture. However, we must prohibit questions before and after lecture. Lecture ends at 10:45 AM, but Dave has an obligation at 11:00 AM, more than 15 minutes away.

Discussion sections will also have time for more detailed questions that would otherwise be best during office hours.

Office Hours

Office hours are by far our preferred forum for discussing most questions.

The current-week office hours schedule can be found on the home page. Except when specified otherwise, office hours are held in the basement of the Siebel Center for Computer Science.

In office hours, our response time will be literally instant. Also, since office hours are synchronous, follow-up is both expected, and easy. Using asynchronous forms of communication such as the discussion forum or email will have a slower response rate and a much lower communication bandwidth. In other words, please come to office hours!

We understand that sometimes asking a question in office hours can be intimidating. Students also find being asked questions, especially questions to which they do not know the answer, to be intimidating. Try your best to avoid these feelings! We are not asking you questions to make you feel bad. We are asking you questions to better understand how we can help. If we don’t know what you don’t know, we don’t know what we need to teach you! If you ask Dave a question, there is a 99% chance he will respond with a question. Questions will often continue until you answer one incorrectly! The sooner you do, the sooner you learn!

Office hours are especially useful if you are facing a technical issue, such as software installation. If there is a technical issue that could be specific to your machine, it is easiest to debug with access to said machine.

Discussion Forum

While office hours provide the opportunity for the best response, the discussion forum often provides the most efficient responses.

CS 307 will use Ed as our discussion forum.

Ed access and login information was sent via email. If you registered late and did not see such an email, please be patient! We will send the login information several times, including after the last day to add the course. This information is also be posted to Canvas.

The course staff will attempt to check the forum at least once a day during the week. You can mostly expect a response within 24 hours, except for weekends. However, do not except a quick response the same day an assignment is due. If you post a last-minute question, it is highly unlikely to be answered. If you need a quicker response, you should consider office hours as an alternative.

The course staff would strongly prefer the use of Ed to GroupMe, Discord, or similar services not officially supported by the course. The course staff feels that a GroupMe or Discord may exclude some students, whereas all are welcome on Ed. Services like GroupMe or Discord also exclude course staff, which while understandable, tends to promote an adversarial relationship between students and their instructors. We’re all on the same team, so let’s act like it.

Private posts have been disabled. Any private matters should be discussed over email where your identity is known. Some anonymous posting is disabled. You may post anonymously to your classmates, but not the course staff. The course staff will know the identity of all posters.

Forum Policy

To ensure high quality and efficient discussion, the following guidelines must be respected when posting on Ed:

  • Do not expect an instantaneous response. We will try our best to respond within 24 hours. If you do receive an instantaneous response it is likely to ask you a follow-up question. The sooner you respond to this, the better, so maybe hang out on the forum for a couple minutes after posting.
  • In addition to selecting a category, provide a useful subject for your post.
    • If your question is about a specific homework question, include the question number as it appears on PrairieLearn, in brackets, as the start of the subject line. For example: [HW03.3]
  • Before posting, please read other recent threads to see if your question or issue was already addressed.
    • If you have a question about a specific homework question, first search using the PrairieLearn question number, such as HW03.3.
  • Be respectful of others.
  • Use complete sentences and proper punctuation.
  • Be mindful of the formatting of your questions. The easier they are to read, the easier they are to respond to.
    • Format code as code, that is, it should appear as a monospace font. It should appear in a block if there are multiple lines. Better yet, Ed also for executable code blocks!
  • Do not discuss any exam content on Ed. We will answer logistical questions about the exams, but any posts containing information about the content of the exams will be deleted and the appropriate academic integrity penalties will be applied.
  • Do not post screenshots of code or error messages. Copy-paste the relevant code or error message as plain text.
  • If requesting help with a code issue or error, provide enough code to recreate your result or error. In other words, course staff should be able to copy-paste the exact code you provide, without any modification or setup, and obtain the same result or error as you do. Do not worry about over-sharing code. That does not apply to assignments (except exams) in CS 307.1

Email

Email should almost exclusively be reserved for private matters. As much as possible, we would appreciate you asking questions about the course where we can respond so that other students benefit from your questions! It’s cliche to say, but if you have a question, someone else is probably thinking it!

CS 307 will follow a strict email policy. Instead of email, consider using the discussion forum! Any quick, non-private communication should take place there.

If you’d like to email the instructor, consider the following:

  • Is your question about course administration? If so, have you read the syllabus and related policy documents? If your question is easily answered in the syllabus (or other documents), we will either refer you to the syllabus, or ignore your email.
  • Is your question about part of an assignment? First and foremost: You should ask it in office hours. After that, consider the discussion board. As a last resort, use email, but there is a good chance you will be re-directed to the discussion board.

If you choose to send an email, you must adhere to the following three rules. If you do not, your email will be considered less import than other emails which follow the rules and response time will be slower.

  • All email must originate from an @illinois.edu email address.2
  • Your subject line must begin with exactly the following: [CS 307]
  • After the above, put a single space, followed by a useful but short description of your message.

Some examples:

## good
[CS 307] Grade feedback question
## bad
## improper format
## non-descriptive subject
[cs307] hi
## bad
## improper format (missing space after CS)
[CS307] Grade feedback question
## bad
## improper format (no space between tag and subject)
## subject too long
## information found in syllabus or website
[CS 307]when is the exam and what is covered on the exam?

If your email is sent between 9:00 AM Monday and 11:59 PM Thursday, and you follow the above directions, we will try our best to respond within 24 hours.

Course Staff Emails

Role Name Email
Instructor David Dalpiaz dalpiaz2@illinois.edu

Private Meetings

If you would like to schedule a private meeting outside of regular office hours, please send an email suggesting two possible times, on two different days. We have a preference for time-slots directly adjacent to current office hours. You must also indicate a brief but specific agenda for the meeting. Requests to schedule a meeting at a time less than 24 hours in the future are unlikely to be granted. Requests without an agenda will be denied. Please provide some sense of what you would like to discuss.

Footnotes

  1. If another student uses your Ed post to do their homework, they will suffer when it comes time to take the exams.↩︎

  2. Depending on the situation, failure to follow this rule may make a response impossible.↩︎