How to help

[CS Crew]

This section is dedicated to providing CS'ers of all levels a place to share their struggles in the unending battle against the ghosts in the keyboards, crazy in the CPU, or, in layman's terms, bugs and conundrums.

Feel free to start a thread on a particular course, language, type of issue, or whatever feels most helpful to you. First though, please do a quick search to see if there is already a thread dealing with your issue.

If a problem is dealing directly with a homework/assignment issue, please don't ask someone to give you the answer, or give one to someone. Help that person by helping them to understand what they're doing, don't just feed them answers, it is bad for them and an academic honesty issue.

Thanks for reading and may the coding muse be with you!

[Mark]

Also, if you're not sure how to deal with something, please ask for some advice from your peers or some of your professors!

[Ethan]

Just wanted to address something that happened in the lab today...

We had a student in the lab today who was struggling with his Mathematica homework. I wasn't in the lab when he first came, but apparently he was in there for at least 20 minutes before I got there. The Matlab TA on duty was helping some people, and had tried to help him a little bit, but having no experience in Mathematica, he suggested googling and told him that if he had a specific question about something he'd try to help him with it. The student was very frustrated and snapped at him, after a little bit longer, he complained aloud wondering why he had come to the room if no one there could help him. The TA reminded him that he could do what he could if he had a specific question. Another student who was working on things, tried to help letting the kid know up front that he had just started using Mathematica in his class, but would try to help. After a couple minutes of looking through documentation and suggesting ideas, the kid snapped again and told him to go away because he couldn't help him.

It was this point, after listening to this student complain and be rude to everyone in the room that I stepped in and informed him that if he's going to come to the CS Crew room to get help, he should check the website for hours and see who has the skills to help him. He snapped back about not needing advice from me, the TA informed him that he had come to the room looking for advice in the first place. After a few minutes of angrily gathering his things, the student left.


My point, is that people can be rude and disrespectful. And if you don't know how to help them, and they refuse to be willing to try suggestions or listen in general. Don't bother with them. Suggest going to see their professor or getting into contact with the TA for the class they're struggling with. I know from the TA that this problematic kid also stormed out of a TA help session when the TA there refused to code his homework for him. We offer our help and our room out to students who need it on our time, and if someones disrespecting that, I believe you have the full right to ask them to leave.

Really wanted to point this out, because on occasion people come in who are, frankly, douchebags. And we don't have to deal with them, and if you know which class they're in, feel free to talk to their professors about them, they might not be able to do much, but at least the professor will know that the student is struggling and might be able to help them in some way that we can't.

[Mark]

Also inform the Crew leadership about these instances, either by email or message on the forums. If someone is out of control, go grab a professor.

[Beau Cameron]

This happens a lot because students think they should be handed the answers to everything. Understandably CS is a difficult subject, but no one learns anything by being given all the answers. He/she may have searched Google for a little but we aren't exactly sure if he/she was searching for the right terms or anything at all. -- or even if they were actually putting much effort into the search. But you could at least provide the student with some Google Search Terms...  I find too many times that people have no idea how to use Google.

Remember, CS Crew is a Learning Aid, not a provider of homework solutions. With that in mind, I know some students can be frustrated and aren't giving you the right respect, but if you can help them, at least a little, it is everyone's duty to try and push the student in the right direction. If they don't take kindly to how you are trying to help, there unfortunately isn't much you can say besides telling him to ask his/her professor for help.