Piazza Usage Guide

Here is a summary of the "ground rules" for Piazza discussions and some pro-tips for getting a faster response.

Before you get started

• Honor code. You must abide by the Georgia Tech Honor Code. We require that all students are familiar with this and the topics in the syllabus concerning collaboration and plagiarism.

• Review the collaboration policy from the syllabus. Collaboration must be only at the "whiteboard level." That means you can discuss high-level strategies and ideas, but should avoid posting the exact code you are using in a solution. (Posting exact code is fine in private notes to the instructors, but must be in "MRE-style" as explained in the syllabus.)

• Required Reading. Some posts require you to mark them as Read before you can post your own question.

Posting

• Use clear, standardized notation. Format = [nb#].[Part#].[Exercise#]. Example: nb1.0.2 = Notebook 1, Part 0, Exercise 2.

• Open discussions allowed after solutions are released: For homeworks and exams, once the solutions are released you're welcome to discuss solutions fully. That includes sharing your code to discuss pros/cons of different methods, or asking more questions about alternative solutions. There are many ways to solve a problem so discussing it after is a good way to keep learning and improve.

• Private posts. When posting privately, there are a few requirements that help us ensure we can help you efficiently:

  • Select "instructors" as the people that can view the post. Do not select specific people
  • Write a short, concise message/question. Lengthy or uninformative posts can cause delays, and we may not be able to address those until later
  • Do not post a block of code without doing some initial debugging and sharing with us what you're having trouble with. We will not debug your code for you, but if you have some ideas we can help guide you in the right direction
  • Do paste smaller sections of code (not screenshots) with some notes and specific requests for us to help.

Getting an answer, asking follow-ups

• Do what you can to be seen If you have a question, make sure your post is "Unresolved" (if the student answer didn't solve it, add a follow-up and ensure that shows "unresolved"). If it is resolved, the TAs are unlikely to see it.

• Stay on topic Do not add a follow-up that's unrelated to the parent post. If it's related to a notebook, add it to the pinned notebook post. If it's a different, unrelated topic, make a new post.

• Do not add to a post more than two weeks old. Create a new post.

• Please be patient! If you are waiting for a reply from a TA/Professor, please be patient as we are handling a large volume of private threads behind the scenes. Do not make a second post asking us to look at the original post you wrote. This will only further delay the resolution of your issue.