How do I schedule shifts for office hours? What if I can’t make my office hours and need to reschedule?

The team uses shiftoverflow.com for scheduling office hours! You can put in when you're free to conduct office hours every week, and can even copy your availability from the last week if it hasn’t changed. Depending on if you are a 5-hour or 10-hour TA, you will be assigned a suitable amount of hours each week. You can check what hours you have been assigned later on shiftoverflow (before the week begins)!

If you suddenly cannot make your assigned office hours, ask if anyone can swap hours with you in a Slack channel by stating your assigned times and other times you are free!

How does office hour work? How does the rating system work afterwards?

When it is your scheduled office hours, log in at course.care and click on click on COMP110. You should be already registered as a TA, if not, reach out to someone who can add you in the Slack.

1. Click the “check-in” button to see who is in the queue and who is already in a call. From there, you can see how many people are in the queue and the number of people being helped in the top right hand corner.
2. You can call a ticket, the next one in the queue, by pressing “call” and then “open.” There will be a Zoom link that pops up for you to join. If you have issues with the Zoom link, you can reach out to the student via their school email, which you should be able to find on course care.
3. After you are done with the student, go back to course care and click “close” to close the ticket. A rating system should pop you for you to fill out with an additional comments box.
4. For ratings, a rating of 3 would signify a normal interaction with a student.
5. A higher rating such as 4 or 5 would indicate that they are doing very well and could be a future TA.
6. A rating lower than 3 would mean that they are struggling more than the average student in the course. If you are worried about the student’s progress in the course or you just want to leave a summary of the session, you can provide a description in the box afterwards.

If office hours are super busy, it is okay to leave the extra comments box empty.

What is shadowing and how does that work?

Shadowing is a process where a new TA collaborates on an office hour ticket with a TA with more experience. Both TAs stay on the call with the student as the newer TA takes a backseat approach to observe the older TAs approach and process. Shadowing is a way for the newer TA to understand how a ticket should be handled and how technical and conceptual questions should be answered. We understand that being a new member of the 110 Team can seem daunting at first, hopefully shadowing can provide you with a general picture of what to expect when you open and call a ticket.

What do I do if I’m not sure what to do with a student’s issue in office hours?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help! If you don’t understand why the student’s IDE isn’t functioning normally or if something is wrong with their code, send a quick SOS to the slack channel #officehours. Be sure to give a short description of your problem and include a zoom link so if any other TA is free, they could jump in and give you a hand. Sometimes, the issue will have come up in the #officehours channel before. You can give it a quick read-through to see if your question has a posted solution.

What is the “all hands” meeting?

All Hands is an hour-long mandatory meeting that usually happens on Sundays at 5pm. It provides a chance every week for all the 110 TAs, 211 TAs, and Kris to meet! In All Hands, we start off with small breakout rooms to let everyone get a chance to know each other better and to talk about their week in and out of office hours. Feel free to bring up any questions or concerns you have seen that week during the meeting. Usually TAs leading special teams, such as outreach or grading, can give updates on their progress and ask for suggestions. All TAs are free to voice problems they’ve seen in office hours or give input on how we as a team could do better.