Lab Feedback (Week 1)

[kourosha...@gmail.com]

Is it possible to switch to Discord for labs and office hours?

I have seen a few instructors using Discord as an alternative to Zoom for office hours and lab sessions. It makes communication easier because it has a tagging feature that Zoom misses, and it can separate questions vs comments using different chat rooms. It also saves the history of the messages for future reference which can be useful.

If anyone else has any feedback, feel free to add it to this discussion.

[Arrvindh Shriraman]

Sorry; it is hard to switch our current set up given the course has already started. 

We will consider this for the next iteration. Any suggestions to improve the Zoom experience is welcome.

[kourosha...@gmail.com]

Ok, no worries. I have seen some people using Zoom breakout rooms to divide the class, I do not know if that would be helpful for labs or not.

I believe lab sessions would be easier for both the TAs and students if we change the way we communicate. For example, if we have a question for the TA, we can start with "@TA", and if we just want to ask the class, we can use "@class" in our messages. Also, zoom offers a private message feature that allows two people to have a discussion without affecting the flow of communication in the main chat room. 

[Arrvindh Shriraman]

+1. We will be including this in the lab policy from next week.