CS 136: Elementary Algorithm Design and Data Abstraction, Fall 2021

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• CS Advising FAQ

Purpose of Piazza

Piazza is a great way to ask questions about your assignments and course material in public. It enables you to learn from questions others have, and avoid asking questions that have already been asked. It also provides a forum for instructors to make announcements and clarifications about assignments and other course related topics. As a result, students are expected to read the CS 136 Piazza on a regular basis. The Piazza class can be found here.

Setting Up Your Piazza Account

An email from the Piazza Team will be sent to your uwaterloo email address. Please follow the steps provided below.

1. Check your uwaterloo email account for the email from the Piazza Team. If the email is not there, then you may have changed your email settings to forward all your uwaterloo emails to another email account. If the email cannot be found in any of your email accounts, then please submit a request tagged "Other" detailing your problem.
2. The email will contain a link to activate your Piazza account and set your password. It is imperative that you provide your first and last name when creating your account so that we can easily contact you if any problems arise.
3. After activating your account, you will be redirected to the CS 136 class discussion forum. Click on the drop down arrow in the top right-hand corner and click on Account Settings. A dialog box will appear on the screen. Under "Preferences for Email Notifications", select "No Emails". It is important that "Real Time" is NOT selected; otherwise, you will receive an email every time another student posts on Piazza.

Using Piazza

To post a question on Piazza, click on "New Post" at the top of the page. You will have the option between posting a question, posting a note and posting a poll. Questions should be posted if an answer is expected, whereas notes should be posted if an answer is not expected but the content of the note is believed to be helpful to both the students and the instructors.

On every question posted on Piazza, there is a students' response box where you can answer other students' questions. Furthermore, if a student has already filled out the students' response box but could have included more information, you can edit their response to include the additional information.

If the student response is satisfactory but you still have questions relating to the original question, you can ask these questions in the followup discussions box.

Instructors, ISAs and TAs will be checking Piazza regularly to answer student questions and to monitor student behaviour on Piazza.