Zoom for CS559

in Pages
Tools
Basic Info
Page content

We will use Zoom for this class: both to record in-person lectures as well as for online meetings with course staff.

Access to the Zoom meetings can be found through Canvas. There will be meetings for each lecture, as well as a recurring meeting for staff consulting hours.

For Lectures

  1. Students will keep their cameras and microphones off, unless we specifically ask you to turn it on (for example if we want you to speak to the class to expand upon a question).

  2. Since the lecture is in-person, we will not respond to questions from Zoom chats until the after the end of the lecture.

  3. We will use TopHat for in-class quizzes.

Questions outside of class

Piazza is our main tool for answering questions outside of class.

If you have a question before class that you’d like to ask, ask it on Piazza. With enough warning I will work it in to class, and if not it will be answered in Piazza. In person, I would always ask for questions at the beginning of class.

If something comes up after class, either stay around after class (see after lecture above), or ask on Piazza.

For Consulting / Office Hours

Making consulting/office hours work online is challenging. While online is OK for 1-on-1, this misses out on students talking to each other, providing shared help (another person has the same question, or one that you didn’t think to ask), etc. We will experiment with making things work. Here is our idea for the experiment:

  1. Please turn your camera on. It is much easier to help someone when you know a person is there.

  2. Do not share your screen until a staff member asks you to.

  3. Our idea is that everyone enters into a “main room” (where people can talk to each other). For private questions, we will move to a breakout room.

Some Troubleshooting tips

  • All meetings are set up to require wisc.edu authentication. Be sure to be signed in using your netid@wisc.edu credentials. You must be logged in to Zoom using your official Wisconsin account.

  • The Canvas/Zoom integration has the links for Zoom and the schedule.

  • We strongly recommend that you use the desktop (not web browser) version of Zoom. Even Zoom on a tablet isn’t so great for class because it is hard to see both the video and the chat.

  • I found that my adblocking software blocked the Canvas/Zoom integration. I had to allow Zoom on web pages in order to see it.

(This page is copied from Professor Gleicher’s CS559 Spring 2023 and updated for Spring 2024)