Here is my policy on helping other students in this course:
- All help must be within the limits allowed by the University's Academic Integrity policies. Questions about assignments will also be limited by the course policy on working together on assignments. If you ask me for help beyond these bounds, you will not get it and will be sorely disappointed.
- General requests for help (clarification requests, definition questions, pretty much anything not related to a specific attempt to solve a problem) should preferably be directed to Piazza first. (Unless an instructor (including your TA) is around, in which case go ahead and ask them as you normally would.) This is because most students and multiple instructors are checking the Piazza board for this course, so everyone benefits: you get an answer from the first person who can help you and has a chance to give one, everyone who is inclined to help knows where to find unanswered student questions and isn't inundated with requests, and other students can refer to those answers later. (This doesn't mean you can't take them to office hours, tutorials, etc.)
- I will allow requests to go over attempted solutions to problems (as will professors and the CS Help Center) but you will probably get more out of it if you come to me with a practice problem that isn't being marked (so we can take notes on the discussion, draw things out, etc.). Please don't send attempted solutions to assignment questions to me electronically, as those constitute notes and I would have to delete them unread. Regardless of the problem you bring, I will try to ask questions to help you think about the problem (to encourage learning) rather than giving you the answer.
