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Prog Lang & Comp

Online Labs

Labs run in the COMS20007 team.

There are two sets of labs in your timetable, Wednesday 9am-11am and Friday 2pm–5pm. Starting from Week 2, we will run both sets of labs, but there will be TAs present only for a subset of the hours.

  • For labs associated with Part I, TAs will be available 10am-11am on Wednesday and 3pm-5pm on Friday.

Lab Format

You are expected to attend at least one of the labs each week (but you may come to more). In Part I you will be working on solving mathematical problems and in Part II you will be working on programming exercises.

Tables

When you attend a lab, either go to your reserved table or join one of the unreserved tables 1-5. The idea is that a table is somewhere can meet your friends (reserved tables) or discover new friends (tables 1-5), and work on the lab exercises together. A table is just a teams channel, so once you are at your table you may wish to start or join a call to make collaboration easier.

If you wish to reserve a table for your friends, please post to the appropriate thread on the Discussion Board during Week 1 and tell your friends which table you reserved.

Only one member of a group a friends needs to do this. We ask you to reserve a table only because:

  • This saves you having to visit each table in turn searching for a free one.
  • All the text chat and file attachments that occur in a channel (table) will persist for the entire duration of the unit.

We are not keeping a record of who is at which table, only which tables are vacant. So please do feel free to move or combine tables as you like, e.g. if two groups of friends club together, or if you fall out with someone! But if you completely vacate a table or occupy a new table, please change your reservation.

Getting Help

The TAs will circulate between the tables as we did in labs before the end times. If you want to request help from a TA just drop into the Front Desk and post a new message in the chat with the question you need help with and you table number e.g.

“Please help with 1(b) on Table 24”

When a TA becomes available, they will reply to your message and come and join you at your table.

  • If the table is reserved and there is a call in progress, they will join the call.
  • Otherwise, they will try to start a new call with you.

If you do not wish to or are unable to talk to the TA on a call, please make that clear in your original help request, e.g. by adding “(text only)” to the end of your message.