Office Hours

Office Hours (OH) are a great place to get homework help or clarification on concepts introduced in class. Our office hour policies are listed below the calendar.

Times and Locations

We run Office Hours both in-person and over Zoom. You can attend Office Hours hosted by any TA — it doesn't have to be the TAs of your section.

All Office Hours are listed below:

  • For calendar events denoting physical location (e.g., CSE 4/F Breakout), the Office Hours are hosted in-person.
  • For calendar events denoting "Zoom", the Office Hours are virtual. Please take a look at the section below for instructions.

Office Hours Policy

Instructor and TA office hours will be available to assist you in understanding course concepts and applying those concepts to your assignments. Office hours should never be used as a substitute for your own learning or for your own earnest effort. As such, the amount of assistance the course staff will provide should correlate with the amount of effort you've made and understanding you possess. In short, the more effort and understanding you have demonstrated before arriving to office hours, the more precise the help we will provide. If you're just beginning to solve the problem or are missing some concept then the help given will be more conceptual in nature.

The Allen School's allocation of TA support for this course is 20 minutes of TA time per week per student. This accounts for all time the TA spends on any course activity (office hours, grading, staff meetings, personal prep, etc.), so TAs have less that 20 minutes per student to spend in office hours. Because this resource can be scarce, here are some expectations and tips for managing office hours:

  • When there is a queue in office hours, we will limit each student-TA interaction to addressing just a single question. To ask multiple questions you will need to re-enter the queue. The reason for this policy is to help as many students as quickly as possible, since after a first round of assistance you will have an opportunity to make more progress on your own before your turn comes up again. I recommend arriving prepared with the question that is your biggest "blocker" to progress.
  • Work-in-progress code is often difficult for a third-party to read. Be prepared to help the course staff member to understand your approach.
  • For quick clarification questions, consider using the Ed Message Board first. Your question may already be answered there, and even if not then you may get an answer faster compared to going to office hours.

Virtual Office Hours

If you're looking for help on homework, we recommend joining from your computer so that you can easily share your screen, but Zoom also lets you join meetings by calling in on a phone, or through mobile apps.

In-Person Office Hours

If there are a lot of people at one time, we might ask you to queue by writing your name down on the whiteboard. Otherwise, we will try to walk through and check-in on everyone's progress from time to time.

The CSE breakouts are areas by the Allen Center staircase with whiteboards, couches, and windows that overlook AERB and MEB. Click here for some pictures of what they look like.

Looking for someone (not a TA) to talk to about CSE332? Try the Study Center in CSE room 006! There's a table there just for working on and discussing CSE332!