Purpose of Piazza
Piazza is a great way to ask questions about your assignments and course
material in public.
It enables you to learn from questions others have, and avoid asking
questions that have already
been asked. Students with a question are expected to search Piazza for
an answer before seeking private help from the course staff. Piazza can
be found here.
Setting Up Your Piazza Account
After the first day of lectures, an email from the Piazza Team will be
sent to your uwaterloo
email address. Please follow the steps provided below.
- Check your uwaterloo email account for the email from the Piazza
Team. If the email is not there, then you may have changed your
email settings to forward all your uwaterloo emails to another email
account. If the email cannot be found in any of your email accounts,
then please email the tutors at cs116@uwaterloo.ca.
- The email will contain a link to activate your Piazza account and
set your password. It is imperative that you provide your first and
last name when creating your account so that we can easily contact
you should any problems arise.
- After activating your account, you will be redirected to the CS 116
class discussion forum. Click on the drop down arrow in the top
right-hand corner and click on Account Settings. A dialog box will
appear on the screen. Under "Preferences for Email Notifications",
select "No Emails". It is important that "Real Time" is NOT
selected; otherwise, you will receive an email every time another
student posts on Piazza.
Using Piazza
To post a question on Piazza, click on "+ New Post" at the top of the
page. You will have
the option between posting a question and posting a note. Questions
should be posted if an
answer is expected, whereas notes should be posted if an answer is not
expected but the content
of the note is believed to be helpful to both the students and the
instructors.
On every question posted on Piazza, there is a students' response box
where you can answer
other students' questions. Furthermore, if a student has already filled
out the students' response
box but could have included more information, you can edit their
response to include the
additional information.
If the student response is satisfactory but you still have questions
relating to the original
question, you can ask these questions in the followup discussions box.
Instructors and TAs will be checking Piazza regularly to answer student
questions and
to monitor student behaviour on Piazza. Please read the Newsgroup
Guidelines below to avoid
committing any offence while using Piazza.
Newsgroup Guidelines
Here are some guidelines that you should keep in mind when posting
messages.
- Please remember that everything you post is public -- everyone will
be reading it. As a result, in any posts you make to Piazza, do not
give away any details in doing any of the assignments -- this could
be construed as cheating. If you have questions about an assignment
that require you to give specific details of your solution, visit
office hours or send an email to cs116@student.cs.uwaterloo.ca . We
have disabled the "anonymous" posting capability (although you will
have the option of appearing anonymous to your fellow classmates).
- Please do not post any assignment code on Piazza, even as a private
message. Visit office hours for any code related questions.
- Keep posts on Piazza course-related. As you are all expected to read
the forum on a regular basis, and many of you are quite busy, people
don't have time to read stuff they shouldn't have to. In relation to
this, Piazza is not for posting "test" posts.
- Please read all questions and responses that are on Piazza before
asking a question. If you ask a question that has already been
answered, you are wasting everyone's time. We realize that there is
a bit of a lag between the time something is posted and when it
actually appears in the group, so this is somethings unavoidable.
However, please try to avoid it as best as possible. Utilize the
excellent search facilities that Pizza offers!
- Make it easy for other students to find your question - just in case
they have the same question and want to see the answer!
- Use a meaningful subject heading. "Help" and even "Help for
a03q3" is not very meaningful. "Clarify contract restrictions
for a03q3" is much better.
- Tag your post with all the applicable tags. Start a tag by
typing the hash character (#). A drop-down list of tags that are
currently in use will appear. Use one of them, if applicable. If
not, create a new one. However, any tag you create should be
applicable to many posts, not just yours.
- Please don't post things to the group that give no useful
information to people. Posts like "I have the same question as this
one posted" or "I agree with this comment" serve no useful purpose,
and waste people's time.
- Please keep complaints about the course out of the newsgroup. If you
have a concern about anything to do with the course, the best way to
deal with it, and to get results, is to take it to the instructor.
Piazza is not a complaint forum.
- Please be respectful of your peers and others in your posts.
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