Getting help with the exercises

As in several other CS courses, we will use Slack and Zoom for organizing the voluntary online exercise sessions.

Slack

The link for the Slack workspace will be given below, please read the following two paragraphs first.

When signing in for the first time, do not use “Continue with Google” or any other social media sign-in option: only people with an Aalto email address will be allowed to join the workspace. Instead, use your Aalto email address. Never use your Aalto password, or any other existing password, to sign in to Slack.

Use of your real name is encouraged so that is easier for the teaching assistants to help you. However, if you prefer to be anonymous towards other students, you can set your “name” and “display name” to your initials. The teacher(s) of the course can always see your real identity.

The Slack workspace of the course is https://join.slack.com/t/aaltocs-e3220-2020/signup

The workspace has the following channels:

• online-exercise-sessions for getting help in the Online exercise sessions.

• round-xy for asking questions about the material and exercises in the round xy. Please see the Etiquette below. As the limited working hours of the assistant are prioritized to the Online exercise sessions, the help requests in these channels are nswered when time permits, no guarantees are given.

• general for any other questions about the course, or on the topics of the course.

Please see these instructions for getting help with Slack in general and for formatting your code in Slack.

Etiquette

• Be polite towards others.

• Do not send help requests in private messages to the course personnel, they will be ignored. Helping is done only in the online exercise sessions and in the round-xy channels.

• If you want to ask a question about your code in a round-xy channel, please

  • post your code in the “Code vault” service found in the “Online exercises” section of the MyCourses page of the course, and

  • then post the provided link in Slack. Only the course personnel can access your code in the “Code vault”.

  Do not post your exercise solution code in Slack: the goal of the course is not to learn modifying other’s code to look like self-written, but to work through the whole problem by yourself.

• When asking for help with your code, please

  • be prepared to explain how the code is supposed to work if you ask for help in an online exercise session, or

  • comment your code before submitting it to the “Code vault” if you ask for help in a round-xy channel.

  This not only makes helping easier, but it may be the case that one spots problems in the code when thinking how to explain/comment it.

Online exercise sessions

For the schedule of the exercise sessions, please see the MyCourses page of the course.

To get help in an exercise session,

• create a Zoom meeting (instructions are given below),

• post the invitation link to the online-exercise-sessions channel, and

• a teaching assistant will then call you when it is your turn. After this, you can discuss with the assistant and share your screen with her/him to show your code.

Setting up Zoom

Zoom is a service, supported by the Aalto University, that allows video calls with screen sharing.

1. First, one needs to install Zoom. There are two possibilities.

   • Install the Zoom desktop client. In this case, please consult the Aalto Zoom Quick Guide.

   • Use Zoom through a web browser. In this case, use Firefox or Chrome as Safari does not support screen sharing. Although Zoom can probably be trusted, it is always safer to log out of all the other web services before sharing the screen through a web browser, please see this Mozilla support post.

2. Second, go to https://aalto.zoom.us/, log in, and edit some settings.

   

   Figure: Select “Sign in”

   

   Figure: sign in by using your Aalto email and password.

   

   Figure: go to “Settings”. You can select “Waiting room” so that people cannot accidentally join in your meeting but they first go to a “Waiting room”: you can then admit the teaching assistant in the meeting.

   

   Figure: in the “Settings”, verify that “Mute participants upon entry” is not checked. In this way, you can hear the assistant immediately when she/he is admitted in your meeting.

Creating a Zoom meeting

To create a Zoom meeting, do the following.

Note: when making your first Zoom meeting, permissions to use microphone, video, and screen sharing will be asked. Furthermore, in some cases, the Zoom client may have to be restarted after granting screen sharing permissions. Thus you may want to practice making Zoom meetings with your friend first, and be patient when making your first Zoom meeting in an exercise session.

1. Start the Zoom desktop client, or go to https://aalto.zoom.us/ if you are using the web browser interface.

2. Select “New meeting” (desktop client) or “Host” (web browser).

   

   Figure: Start a new meeting in the desktop client.

   

   Figure: Start a new meeting in the web browser.

   

   Figure: When using the browser version, select “join from you browser”.

3. Then, select “Join Audio by Computer”.

   

   Figure: When using the browser version, select “join from you browser”.

4. You now have started a meeting. To invite an assistant to the meeting, click the small “(i)” info button in the upper left corner, copy the “Invite link”, and post it to the online-exercise-sessions channel in Slack.

   

   Figure: Get the invite link and post it to Slack.

5. When an assistant joins the meeting, “Admit” her/him in the meeting. After this, you can discuss with him and share your screen with her/him.