E-mail
Unfortunately, I as a human do not scale very well. Large class sizes and other obligations(i.e. more than lecturing when you see me ;) ) result in an average of around 50-75 e-mails per day. But really, that's my issue to wrestle with--so I want to tell you how you can get your questions answered as soon as possible.
- My policy with e-mail is that I will try to answer between 24-48 hours during the week. Saturday I do not check my e-mail at all so I can recharge and course prep.
- Personal circumstances should certainly be communicated to me in a private way through my .edu mailing address.
- Piazza posts related to course questions should 'cc' other instructors if private, so one of our team members can best serve you (And I do check piazza often--and get e-mail notifications of new posts).
If you are going to use piazza or send me an e-mail, this template may help you answer your question before you hit send. But otherwise, try sending in this format.
Piazza will be faster, but obviously some content related questions (that may contain solutions) should not get posted there publicly.
Otherwise, please do use this template, it is not set in stone (But it will also show that you spent some effort trying to solve the problem.)
- Subject line: [CS course_number_here] _Your_question_or_concern_here
- What is the problem you are having?
- What have you tried?
- What do you think you can try next to solve the problem?
Often by the time I ask students these questions, they will have had an insight that pushes them forward enough to fix the problem!