CSE 6040 Exam Issue Piazza Templates

Below are templates you can copy and paste into Piazza when posting about exam issues. Please paste them into a private piazza post with all of the required information filled in.

We'll get to your report as quickly as we can, but depending on the time and number of students it may take us some time. It's important that you provide all of the information requested below so we can address the issue quickly once we get to it, and document it in case it takes longer to resolve.

Platform Issue Reporting

Please spend less than 1 minute filling this out if you experience a platform outage. Generally outages are short (<15 minutes), so please standby and wait for a TA response if your submit this during normal US Eastern Time (9am-9pm). Please also confirm that this is a platform issue, and not something you can resolve by following Vocareum Troubleshooting steps or Platform and Proctoring Troubleshooting steps.

email/username:

issue: [vocareum outage, proctoring service outage, other] + explanation

time of issue start: [time + timezone]

steps taken to resolve issue: [list all troubleshooting steps tried and the result]

request additional time: [yes/no]

When it gets resolved, if the TA's haven't yet replied:

time resolved: [time + timezone]

update notes: [any additional notes]

Potential Bug Reporting

Please use this only if you legitimately believe there is a bug. You may also submit this after the exam closes and you are able to look at solutions + review your work in more detail.

email/username:

exercise#: [0-x]

screenshot:

explanation: [what is happening, what should be happening; why you believe your code should be correct]

!! Before you submit the bug report:

We thoroughly test the exams prior to release. The overwhelming majority of reported "bugs" are actually issues with student solutions. However, we investigate all reports. If a bug is found, we will make appropriate adjustments. If the issue is your code, we will let you know the reason after the exam window closes.

Bug inquiry: If you think you are encountering a bug where your solution is incorrectly failing a test cell, do the following:

1. Check your output against the expected output thoroughly using the test case variables described in the debugging section.
2. Submit your work - this confirms a clean test of your work is still resulting in an error. This also gives us a snapshot that we can use to reproduce the bug, which is critical
3. Make a private Piazza post visible to the instructors with a short description of the problem. You can use the template above to ensure we have all of the required information.
4. Continue working to debug your solution or move on to another exercise. It takes some time for us to find the issue. If the problem is found to be in your solution, we do not give any concessions for lost time spent debugging.
5. The later in the exam period that you are taking the exam, after hundreds of students have taken the exam, the more unlikely it is that you have found a bug. The vast majority of bugs (if any) are identified within the first 24 hours of the exam window.