CSCI 102 – Introduction to Programming

People and Office Hours

We encourage you to post questions on the course EdStem page so that other students can also benefit from these questions or answer them. But when you need individualized help, feel free to attend staff office hours.

All staff office hours are posted via the calendar below. They may change periodically so just check it before you go to office hours for help. Each calendar item indicates if the staff is holding office hours in person in the SAL 125 computing user room or occasionally on Zoom.

If in SAL: you can look for the course staff by matching them to the pictures below or they will often leave a message on the white board or other area as you enter regarding where they are located. Please let the TA know you would like help and they will direct you to write your name down on a whiteboard or paper waiting list. They will call you when it is your turn to receive help.
If on Zoom: We will post our zoom room links which you can then join. Please wait in the main room as the TA may be working with another student in a breakout room (so that screen sharing doesn’t reveal a student’s code to everyone else.)

OH Policies

Please be aware of and follow some basic procedures with office hours:

Typically, we will spend 5-7 minutes before moving on to help another students.
You are ultimately responsible for working on your own code and solving problems that arise. While we will do our best to help, sometimes the error is buried under a lot of code. We likely cannot dig fully into your specific implementation. So, you should be prepared to say what you’ve done to try to find the source of the issue and/or the solution.
- If you are getting a compile error, have you searched it on the internet?
- Have you compared your syntax to examples in the slides?
- If you have a bug as the program runs, have you added print statements or stepped through your code via a debugger?
- Have you commented out sections of code until you can get something to work and then added portions back in? If the answer is no, our staff may ask you to do that first and then rejoin the queue.
Those that we notice keep rejoining again immediately after getting help or joining the queue before office hours even start, may be deprioritized in an effort to be fair to everyone.

Feedback form

If you have particularly positive or negative experiences with a TA or CP, let us know! Use the following feedback form. You can also provide any constructive criticism that relates to specific staff or the course in general.

Calendar

Note that we may change the listed office hours as needed, or add more before homework deadlines or examinations. For an up to date listing please see the Google Calendar