CS2103/T Student Mentors

Helping Students in the Forum

The main job of student mentors is to pitch in to help solve technical problems posted in the forum by current students. Given below are some guidelines.

• It is important that current students get the first crack at solving technical problems as it is one of the course learning outcomes.
  Therefore, only the problems that are not resolved within a reasonable period need inputs of student mentors.
  Hence, the workload is expected to be very light (because the current students are likely to be able to resolve most issues among themselves).
• You will be informed when mentor help is needed for an issue, via a post in the mentors issue tracker. In those cases, you can respond immediately.
• You are expected to 'watch' the mentors repo mentioned above so that you get notified when the prof posts in the mentors issue tracker seeking your help.
• Student mentors are not required to (but are welcome to) watch the forum used by students.
• Optionally, student mentors can guide current students about forum usage best practices. Some examples:
  • point out missing information in a help request
  • remind a student to close a resolved issue
  • mention GitHub features (e.g., fenced code syntax) the student can use to improve the post
• Optionally, student mentors can supplement resolved issues by adding more info e.g., why the solution works, alternative solutions not mentioned.
• Do not answer admin questions (e.g., questions about course requirements). Even tutors are prohibited from answering admin questions. Prof will answer those.
• It's best not to answer theory questions too. This is because it is hard for you to keep track of which topics have been covered by a specific time in the course. It can confuse students if your answer refers to topics not covered yet.
• Avoid duplicate answers by checking the prior posts in the thread before posting yours as the same answer might be already present in the thread. Otherwise you might end up creating spammy posts.
• Mentioning that you are from a previous batch when answering questions might be good. e.g.,

  Hi @abc, I'm from your senior batch (dropping by in this forum to see if I can help you guys with tech problems). Can you check if ...

If you have questions/suggestions, you can post in the mentors issue tracker.

Other Ways to Contribute

There are other ways to contribute to the course as a student mentor, for example, by reviewing updates to course materials. When such tasks are available, you will be informed via the mentors issue tracker.

Pathways to CS2103R and CP3108A/B credit are also available for student mentors who contribute to the course in a significant way. More info can be found in this GDoc