Summary:

• Lectures will be via Zoom. (“Online Meetings” tab on Collab.) Recordings will be available.

• Office Hours will be via Discord with an online queue.

• Non-real-time questions will be via Piazza (see link from Collab).

Lectures

Lectures will be via Zoom. Find them from the “Online Meetings” tab on Collab.

All lectures will be recorded, and if you want to work only off the recordings, I won’t stop you.

During lectures, you can ask questions (primarily via Zoom’s chat, but you can also use the “raise hand” button). I will try to have at least a couple exercises with which I will collect answers via a Zoom poll each lecture. These polls will not be graded.

Office Hours

We will hold office hours using voice chat with screenshare via Discord.

To use this, you will setup a Discord client (instructions below) and then place yourself in either the “Waiting Room” channel or one of the public channels and sign up on the office hour queue. When it is your turn for help, a TA will move you to an appropriate voice channel.

When getting help, you can use Discord’s screensharing support (instructions below) to share your screen with a TA.

On the office hour queue we ask you to indicate whether your problem can be answered publicly. Examples of questions that can be answered publicly include almost anything about a lab (where collaboration is permitted), conceptual questions about already-complete quizzes, or high-level questions about how to get started or approach part of the homework assignment. Examples of questions that cannot be answered publicly include anything that might involve showing code or pseudocode for homeworks.

For questions which can be discussed publicly, we intend for TAs to answer them in a public voice channel (or text channel, if needed) so others can hopefully benefit.

Discord setup instructions

• Download Discord here: https://discordapp.com/download (or use the in-browser version)

• Install Discord and open it.

• Register on Discord and verify your email address.

• Login using your new credentials.

• Click on the plus on the left side to “Add a server”.
  

• Next select “Join a server”.
  

• Paste the “Discord link” from the Overview tab on Collab.

• After being added to the server, click the server name in the top-left corner to get a context menu. From the context menu, select “change nickname” and choose a reasonable name.
  

Discord office hour instructions

All this information should also be in the #instructions channel on Discord.

• During office hours, add yourself to the open queue at https://kytos.cs.virginia.edu/cs4414-001-spring2021/ohq/. Your position in the queue may be reset between office hours. A short description of the problem or question is highly recommended to make the queue more efficient. You should be able to update your description without taking yourself off the queue.

• Next, connect to the 🔊waiting-room voice channel, or to one of the “Public” voice channels.

• When you have been reached on the queue, a TA will move you from the 🔊waiting-room to one of the TA channels.

Screensharing

• If asked, click the screen with arrow pointing out of it button in the bottom-left to share your screen. The TA might alternately give you instructions join a Zoom call for better quality.

No voice?

• If you cannot use voice for some reason, we will do our best provide help via text. Please let us know in your problem description in the queue if this will be the case.