CS Teaching Lab Reports

The ISG tutors check various teaching labs on a weekly basis, reporting problems to teaching-lab-report@cs.uwaterloo.ca. Their initial instructions tend to look like this:

From spaull@uwaterloo.ca Tue May  8 13:37:44 2012
From: Simone Paull
To: ISG Coordinators ,
    ISG Tutors
CC:
Subject: Lab Assignment Schedule

Instructions for checking lab conditions:
==================================
ISG prepares a weekly report of computer science teaching lab
conditions. (See attached)

Once a week, including the exam periods, each room will be checked for
missing/broken chairs, mice, keyboards, and that each computer appears
to be "up" (Move the mouse and glance at the display; turn on power/boot
if necessary).

Moreover, for Mac Labs:
A red dot and label will appear on the user id line on the login screen if there
are no networked accounts available.

If it is "red," then you should check to make sure the network cable is
in place at both ends - i.e. in the back of the Mac, and down under the
desk. Or of course if the whole lab is "red" then let us know there is a
"big problem"!

A yellow dot and label on the user id line on the login screen indicates that
some networked accounts are available.  This could indicate a problem with
the network cable or other intermittent problems.  Try logging in with your
credentials and see if you succeed.  If not then investigate further.

If the machine won't "boot," with "no reaction," then check to make sure
the power cord is connected at both ends, and maybe try an adjacent outlet.

A report will be sent by each tutor, who checked labs, on Fridays of
each week, *even if no problems are observed*, to
teaching-lab-report@cs.uwaterloo.ca. 

Moreover, a problem sheet should be posted inside each lab so students
can report problems themselves. ISG will post those sheets in the labs
and collect comments from them to include in the reports. Reports are to
be simple text files formatted like the example below.

Sample structure:
Date Room Name Description
2008/09/26 MC3003 imac160 missing a mouse.
2008/09/26 MC3003 imac160 won't allow people to log in.
2008/09/26 MC3003 imac129 mouse is sticky, and doesn't respond
2008/09/26 MC3003 imac129 non-functional tilde (~) key

--

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Simone Paull
Undergraduate Studies Department
David R.Cheriton School of Computer Science
Office DC 3118

As problems are reported, we create and assign appropriate work records to resolve the problems. Each lab has a master item which exists to collect the per-incident items created during the term. Those items are dependencies of a single per-term item. At the end of each term, a new set of report items is created, to avoid having items that are guaranteed to never end. The overall master item has a See Also to the previous term and next term item. Some examples are:

Winter 2011 ⇔ Spring 2011 ⇔ Fall 2011 ⇔ Winter 2012 ⇔ Spring 2012 ⇔ Fall 2012 ⇔ Winter 2013 ⇔ Spring 2013 ⇔ Fall 2013 ⇔ Winter 2014 ⇔ Spring 2014 ⇔ Fall 2014 ⇔ Winter 2015 ⇔ Spring 2015.

teaching lab reports - Spring 2015 term
| service: student/lab
| component: classrooms
| advancement: inherent/monitoring
| owner: wcwince
| responsible: wcwince
| summary: This gathers the lab reports we receive from ISG (and potentially) others.
|  The reports are about basic room and workstation problems.
|  It will be done by end of term, when we start a new set of reports.
|  See https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC2061
	| service: student/lab/thin-client
	| component: desktop/thin_client
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC2061
	| owner: ctucker
	| responsible: ctucker
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC2062
	| service: student/lab/mac
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC2063
	| owner: echrzano
	| responsible: echrzano
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC2063
	| service: student/lab/mac
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC2063
	| owner: echrzano
	| responsible: echrzano
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC3003
	| service: student/lab/mac
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC3003
	| owner: echrzano
	| responsible: echrzano
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC3004
	| service: student/lab/mac
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC3004
	| owner: echrzano
	| responsible: echrzano
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC3005
	| service: student/lab/mac
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC3005
	| owner: echrzano
	| responsible: echrzano
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC3022
	| service: student/lab/thin-client
	| component: desktop/thin_client
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC3022
	| owner: ctucker
	| responsible: ctucker
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC3027
	| service: student/lab/mac
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC3027
	| owner: echrzano
	| responsible: echrzano
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC4065
	| service: student/tutorial-centre
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC4065
	| owner: wcwince
	| responsible: wcwince
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

Whether the following should be included is debatable, as ISG doesn't support courses that use them, and it's the ISG tutors who do the checking, and they likely don't have access to them:

        teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC3007
	| service: student/lab/graphics
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC3007
	| owner: fhgunn
	| responsible: fhgunn
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.

	teaching lab reports - Spring 2015: MC3018
	| service: student/lab/real-time
	| component: desktop
	| advancement: inherent/monitoring
	| location: MC3018
	| owner: fhgunn
	| responsible: fhgunn
	| summary: see https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/TeachingLabReports for details.