Ed

Purpose

Ed is a good way to discuss and ask questions about the course materials, including assignments, in a public forum. It enables you to learn from the questions of others, and to avoid asking questions that have already been asked and answered. It is also the primary place for course personnel to make announcements and clarifications about assignments and other course-related topics.

Students are expected to read the pinned posts on Ed at least once a day.

Enrolling

You will be sent an invitation to your UW email address. It will include a button to “Activate your account”.
Click it to go to a web page where you will set a password. You’ll then go to a page listing your courses. Choose CS135.

Reading

After you’ve finished the sign-up process, simply go to http://edstem.org . You’ll probably want to bookmark this in your browser.

Configuring E-mail Notifications

By default, Ed emails you when there are new topics and posts. This can get overwhelming when the class is busy. Fortunately, Ed allows you to configure how frequently you get emails:

  • Click on the account icon at the top right corner of the screen
  • Choose “Settings” from the drop-down menu and then “Notifications” on the left.

New Thread Digests set to “none” is appropriate if you go to the web site daily to catch up.

The default Notification Emails – which notify you of activity on threads you’ve interacted with – should probably be left on.

Posting Guidelines

  1. Be kind! Ed should be an open and friendly discussion. Respect each other.

  2. We encourage you to answer each other’s posts. You’ll get answers faster than if everyone waits for course staff. Staff read the the posts and give a thumb’s up or correction, as necessary.

  3. “Heart” solutions that you find helpful.

  4. Please remember that by default everything you post is public - everyone enrolled in CS135 will be reading it. As a result, in any posts you make, do not give away any details on how to do any of the assignments. This could be construed as cheating, and you will be responsible as the poster.

  5. If you have questions about an assignment that require you give specific details of your solution, you may still post to Ed, but check Private so that only instructors and ISAs see it. If the instructors and/or ISAs feels that posting it to everyone is appropriate, he or she will do so. More details below.

  6. Keep posts related to the course, concise, and topical. As students are all expected to read Ed on a regular basis, try not to waste the time of others.

  7. Please be diligent about attempting to find the answer before you post a question. Ed includes excellent search facilities – use them! Scan all of the questions that have already been asked. Better yet, read them along with the answers. You’ll learn lots!

    This avoids duplicate questions, which are frustrating to everyone. It’s more work to answer two questions than to answer one, there may be conflicting advice, students need to sift through more entries to find what they need, etc. Please do all you can to avoid duplicates.

  8. 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 A3P3” is not very meaningful. “Clarify parameter order for A3P3” is much better.
    • Tag your post with all the applicable categories.

  9. Please don’t post things to the group that provide no useful information to readers. Posts like “I have the same question”, or “I agree with this comment” serve no useful purpose and just waste people’s time.

  10. Keep complaints about the course out of Ed or mark them as Private. 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 an ISA or your professor. Ed is not a complaint forum.

Appropriate and inappropriate posts

Here are some guidelines about what is okay and what is not for public posts on Ed. It is not an exhaustive list, but should give you a sense of what we are looking for.

If something is not appropriate to ask in a public post then you make ask it in a private post, or use our 1-1 office hours.

Once in a while a private post is okay to be public, and would be helpful for other students to see. In that case we may request to make the post public.

Okay

  • General lecture questions

    • “What does this phrase on this slide mean?”
    • “Could somebody provide another example to illustrate this concept?”

  • Course concepts

    • Lecture slides
    • Lecture exercises
    • Problems from the textbook

  • Problems you make up to test your understanding

    • You can make as many practice problems as you want, but don’t make them too similar to assignment problems.

  • Clarifications on ambiguities or errors in the assignments

  • “May we assume rational numbers for Q3?”

  • Questions about design recipe and style

    • Be careful not to reveal assignment code!
    • Be careful to read through the Style Guide first!

  • Issues you are having with the technology of the course (Teams, DrRacket, etc)

  • Practice (not required) stepper problems on assignments

  • Questions about error messages

    • Try to understand the error message before posting: DrRacket errors are usually pretty informative.
    • Be careful! Don’t reveal assignment code.

  • Questions about how the course is set up

Not okay

The rule of thumb: if it could be submitted for marks, you should not discuss it in a public post (but you may make a private post).

  • Assignment questions that reveal answers

    • “What did I do wrong in this code?”
    • “How should I represent 4/3 in the formula for volume?”
    • “Is this set of test cases sufficient?”
    • “I do not know how to approach question 5”

  • Questions asking us to mark assignments before they are handed in

    • “How many helper functions do I need?”
    • “Do I have enough tests?”
    • “Should I make this value a constant?”

  • Required stepper questions

    • “What is the next step?”

  • Bonus questions (we do not discuss them at all)

    • “How do I approach this question?”

After the deadline for these has passed (for assignments: once the solutions have been released) then you may discuss them.

Fuzzy

There is an irritating fuzzy line where people ask about general concepts that are closely related to assignment questions. To be on the safe side you may want to make them private posts or discuss them in office hours.

If the spirit behind your question is “how do I solve this assignment problem?” then you are headed for the danger zone. Turn back!

  • “How would I format a hypothetical literal for a hypothetical question about a sphere?”
  • “Here is the formula for the volume of a cone. How would I translate this, given that it is very close to the formula for a volume of a sphere?”
  • “How would I rewrite this cond using boolean expressions, and by the way the cond is structured very similarly to something on the assignment?”