What is an LA?	A Learning Assistant (LA) is a fellow undergraduate student who has experience with the course material who is there to help you succeed in your course. They have often taken the course or have some form of outside experience with the course’s content.
What is a CL?	A Course Leader (CL) is a course-specific leader within the LA Program. CLs have often been with the program in previous semesters, and they oversee some LAs as well as meet regularly with the instructor.

What can you go into OH for?

Content Help	LAs and CLs can help you learn difficult material in your course. You do not need to be working on a specific assignment to go in for help! If you are struggling with a certain concept or just have general questions about course content, go into office hours for some one-on-one time with an LA or CL who can help you understand the material better. They are here to help you learn, not just to help debug your assignments, so you can always go to them even if you don’t have a specific problem you need help on.
Grading Questions & Feedback	LAs and CLs often grade assignments within the courses. If you have questions about the grading of your assignment, the LA who graded you is a great resource to understand why you may have lost points. Also, LAs can be a great way to learn how to do better on future assignments. They can give you more detailed explanations on the feedback they did give. You can go into your grader’s OH and ask them what you should do differently in the future to earn more points on your assignments.
Assignment Planning & Debugging Help	LAs and CLs are great when you are working through assignments in the course. First, they can be really helpful when just getting started on an assignment! Of course, they cannot just tell you how to solve something, but you can ask them to help you brainstorm how to go about a solution, or if you have an idea you want to talk through with someone, OH can be used for that! Secondly, if you have started work on an assignment and get stuck somewhere with a bug, LAs and CLs are a great resource to help you find that bug and get working on a solution. They can also help teach you debugging strategies that will help you be able to identify and solve more bugs on your own going forward.

When Going into OH:

Have your IDE or coding environment open, setup, and ready to go before you ask for help.
You must make a substantial and honest attempt to solve your problem before you ask for help.
Look for similar problems or examples from the lectures, labs, other assignments, textbook, etc.
Look to your peers for help! To the level that you are allowed to collaborate, ask someone around you. On the same note, if someone around you asks for help, lend it!
Be specific with your problem: be able to fully describe what the issue is, the steps you’ve taken to resolve it so far, and what you think the problem might be.
Show Respect. This includes respecting the time of Learning Assistants, respecting your fellow instructor, and respecting your fellow students.

General Tips:

Student Zoom Protocol	We have created a Student Zoom Guide for getting started with Zoom OH and to explain how the LAs and CLs will be managing OH this semester. View it here: Student Zoom Protocol.docx
Go for help EARLY!	Start your assignments early so you can go for help early! There are many LAs and CLs with OH scattered throughout the week. When everyone comes into Office Hours at the same time right before an assignment is due, it is really difficult for LAs and CLs to give everyone extended attention and work through every issue. Do yourself a favor by asking for help earlier when there are more likely fewer people in OH. LAs and CLs will often be able to spend a little more time helping and you can have a more thorough conversation with them. Even 1-2 days earlier can make all the difference in the amount of quality time you can have with an LA.
Try a few debugging techniques yourself first!	If you run into a bug while working on an assignment, it can be really beneficial to try some things on your own first so you can discuss with the LA or CL what you have tried, and they can help guide you from there. You can also ask LAs and CLs some debugging strategies if you are not quite sure where to start. LAs and CLs are great at helping you learn the content, but don’t forget they are also there to help you develop your CSE skills overall.
Try to come up with some questions first	Sometimes you will get stuck and just not be sure where to go. That’s okay. Other times, you may be stuck at a specific portion of your assignment. If you go into OH with a few specific questions or at least a general idea on where to start, the LA or CL will be able to more quickly figure out how to help you!
Don’t be afraid to ask for help	LAs and CLs are very willing to help you learn the material and skills presented in your course. It can be daunting at first to go into office hours, but remember: we’ve all been there! LAs and CLs have often stumbled upon the same topics you are, and they’re there to help you get through them as well. It can also help you start to build relationships; going into OH lets both people put names to faces which just adds to the community in the School of Computing.
Be understanding if OH are busy.	If there are a lot of students in OH at once, please understand that the LAs and CLs are doing their best to help everyone fairly. They will be maintaining a queue to stay organized. With Zoom, it can be harder to see them helping other students, so we ask for your patience as needed. Review the Student Zoom Guide for extra information on how OH are being managed. And remember, going for help early can help reduce any wait time you may have during OH.

Common Problems and Questions to Ask Yourself:

“I don’t know where to start”

(this can be applied to an entire program or just a smaller portion of it)

Have you read the handout?
Have you walked through any examples provided on paper or a whiteboard?
Have you worked through another example of your own creation?
Have you outlined a rough solution or tried to write up rough pseudocode?
Are there certain components of the program you feel comfortable starting with code/pseudocode before going to Office Hours?

“I have a bug or problem I don’t know how to solve”

Can you describe the problem to someone else? (possibly try “Rubber Duck Debugging”)
What solutions have you attempted so far?
Can you reproduce the problem consistently?
What are your test cases? Would different test cases help you pinpoint where the error is happening?
Can you identify where the problem is occurring? What line or block of code?
Have you tried running a debugger up to the point of failure, or used it to identify that point? (If you don’t know how to use the debuggers, Learning Assistants can help you with them!)