Technology Failures
Technology problems are inevitable. When they happen, we will cope.
Failures are never convenient. A personal experience: I had a neighborhood-wide internet service outage while I was trying to proctor the CS559 final exam!
We expect that everyone will have something go wrong at some point during the semester.
If you miss something because of a technical failure, you should:
Let us know as quickly as possible. You might not be able to send us email or a Piazza message if your internet is out (since, generally, you need the internet to communicate with us), but make as best an effort that you can. You might be able to send email using your cell phone, or text message a friend who can send email to us.
Try to do the best you can to recover. You may not be able to listen or discuss in an online discussion, but you can read the material and watch the video afterwards. If you can’t turn something in on time because there is a service problem, turn it in as soon as you can.
These kinds of failures are why we have “drop 2” policies and “consistency” based late policies.
If you have a chronic problem, try to address it. If things fail once or twice in a semester, that’s expected. If you are often unable to participate in class, you may need to see if there is something you can improve about your technology.
If there is something major, let us know. For example, if there is a bad storm that disconnects you for an extended period of time.
In general, we will treat technology failures like everything else. If you miss (or are unable to participate fully) in a synchronous class activity, or are late in turning in an assignment, or miss an announcement because of technology failure, the class policies are pretty robust to small problems (we drop 2 of most things, the late policy is about consistency, …). One or two problems won’t hurt you. If you have more than that, we’ll discuss on a case by case basis.
The University provides some advice on the UW Internet Connection Doctor page.