Meet-ups with MLPR Chat

Video: Meet-ups with MLPR Chat (5 minutes)
Instructions for how to use Microsoft Teams in MLPR to meet up with other students and to ask questions.

There is now a Microsoft Teams “MLPR 2020/21 Chat” team for video-call meet-ups and general discussions.

To get started with the MLPR Chat, we will have virtual meet-up and questions events in Week 1 on Tuesday 22 September and Friday 25 September at 9:30 AM and 4:30 PM UK time (BST, UTC+1). These events are non-compulsory but they are a great opportunity to meet other students in the class. Please make sure to fill out the MLPR welcome form. You must fill out the welcome form to be included in virtual meet-up and questions events! The lecturers Iain and Arno will also be around during these events to answer questions.

In previous years, students would come to the lecturer right after the lectures to ask additional questions which meant that we had large gatherings in front of the lecture hall. We hope to improve on this by using virtual meet-ups. Nevertheless, please expect the welcome events to be rough around the edges.

1 Microsoft Teams for MLPR

This year (2020/21), we will be using Microsoft Teams for online tutorials, for meet-ups between students and for the meet-up and questions events.

1.1 Accessing and Navigating Teams

Please follow these instructions to install and learn about the basic Microsoft Teams parts we’ll use. There are many other Teams features we won’t be using for this course.

1. We recommend installing Teams rather than using it in the browser. For instructions, see “How do I access teams” on the Getting Started with Teams page.
2. Read through the section “How do I navigate Teams?” on the same page. You don’t need to read the other information on that page.
3. We will use “channels” to organize our discussion groups, so if you’re not familiar with them, please read the “Channels” section of this page.
4. To change your notification and status settings, read the “Settings” section of this page.

1.2 MLPR 2020/21 Chat team

We have a chat team for getting to know other students and for discussing questions. In MS Teams, navigate to the Teams tab. Selecting it should show you all teams you are a member of, including “MLPR 2020/21 Chat” if you filled out the MLPR welcome form by the evening before any of the meet-up events. Selecting the “MLPR 2020/21 Chat” team will bring you to the central team view of the chat team. To the left, you will see a list of channels (“General”, “Course content”, …). Channels are like discussion places. You can imagine the “MLPR 2020/21 Chat” team as room and the channels as tables in the room where different things are discussed.

The “General” channel will be used for general announcements about the chat team. We’ve set up a range of additional channels for various topics you might want to discuss. If you click on a channel, you should see a chat interface where you can post messages and see the messages that other people posted.

2 Meet-up with other students

We have a “Meet-up” channel for getting to know other students from the class. We suggest the following ice-breaker activities:

1. Chat: This activity is about speaking with other students in the class. Talk about whatever you like. If you don’t know what to talk about, here is a silly idea: Ask yourself, what time would you like to visit if you had a time machine that would just once let you travel to any point in time in the past or future.

   • If there is a “time machine” conversation in the “Meet-up” channel without a reply, post a reply with the date you would like to travel to and then message the conservation starter to ask if they are available for a call. You can do this by selecting the user icon and then entering your message. Similarly, you can start a video call by pressing the phone symbol after selecting a user. Now you can discuss in the video call why you selected your particular years.
   • If there is no conversation without a reply, start a new conversation by pressing the “New conversation” button at the bottom and post the text “Time machine:” followed by the year you selected.

2. Sharing a Python plot: This activity is about sharing your screen and demonstrating your Python setup. You should show your development environment and let the other student see your code. You should also discuss the code.

   • If there is a “Python plot” conversation in the “Meet-up” channel without a reply, post a reply saying that you have your Python setup working and then message and call the person like in the “time machine” activity. In the video call, each of you should once share their screen, show their development environment and show a Python plot and the associated code.
   • If there is no conversation without a reply, start a new conversation by pressing the “New conversation” button at the bottom and post the text “Python plot”.

3. Sharing equations: Like for the “Python plot” activity, but here, use the “Equations” description in the conversations and try showing an equation in the video call. Experiment with different ways to share your writing. You could take a picture of the writing and then send it using the chat box. There are clever live writing options for adventurous students. You could also use a secondary device such as a mobile phone, along with pen and paper as follows:

   • Create a stack (e.g. from books) for somewhere to rest your phone on top, so that you camera is able to record below.
   • When joining the call in the channel with your device, make sure to turn off the device’s microphone and mute the output to avoid nasty feedback/double recording.
   • Before resting your phone on the stack, select the back camera using the white camera icon and make sure the orientation of the recording is the right way up, by tilting your phone portrait/landscape.

Pair programming activities are important in industry and academia, and for this course. Please make use of this opportunity to try it out. Similarly, the abilitiy to share equations and ideas over a video-call is an important skill as well.

3 Questions and discussions

For questions and discussions, we’ve set up three topic channels: “Course content”, “Logistics” and “Math and programming”. Each channel is a place where things about the topic can be discussed.

Select the channel that best matches the topic of your question and don’t worry if it doesn’t match perfectly. Have a look at the conversations that have already been posted.

• It could be that another student had the same question and you may find an answer in the conversation. If so, great!
• If your question has been asked before but is not answered in the conversation then let other people know that you have the same question by clicking on the message and selecting the “Like” emoji.
• If your question has not been asked before, create a new conversation using the “New conversation” button and post your message.

Of course, if you can answer or contribute to a question that another student has, please do so. Messages are persistent and the whole class can see them, so you might prefer starting a video call with other students. You can message them directly and start a call by selecting their user icon. We encourage you to discuss non-assessed questions collaboratively. Having a conversation about a question is also a great way to get to know other students!

3.1 Starting or joining meetings for discussions

Teams is most useful for having video-calls. Rather that writing your question in a conversation, you can start or join a video-call meeting. To start one for your particular question, click on the channel that is most appropriate for your meeting.

1. Check if there is already another meeting with a similar topic to yours. If so, or if you’d just like to meet other students, consider joining that meeting by clicking the ‘join’ button. You can introduce yourself to the other student(s) and start talking about your questions.

2. If you don’t want to join an existing meeting, then

   • If you’re using the Teams app on a mobile device then you cannot start a channel meeting. If possible, use another device to start a meeting or post a message in a conversation asking somebody with a similar question to start a meeting.
   • To start a meeting on another device, click on the ‘Meet’ button in the upper right to start your own meeting. A meeting window will open. Before clicking ‘join’, check your device settings and enter a descriptive title for your meeting in the text box.

4 Meet-up and question events

We will have four Week 1 meet-up and questions events: Tuesday 22 September and Friday 25 September at 9:30 AM and 4:30 PM UK time (BST, UTC+1). The main purpose of these events is to meet other people but none of these events is compulsory.

At the meet-up times, the lecturers Iain and Arno will be around on Teams to answer questions. Please follow the general “Questions and discussions” procedure. If you want to explicitly involve us in a question during the meet-up times, you can mention us in your conversation message: When you type ‘@’ followed by a name, you can select and mention particular people such as @Iain MURRAY and @ONKEN Arno. We will prioritise questions about course selection. Please @mention us only during the meet-up events. At other times you should use the Hypothesis forum or, for individual matters, send us an email.

Please do not send a meeting “request to join” to Iain and Arno. But during the meet-up events you can @mention us in a chat message to let us know you are there. We will join your meeting when we are done meeting with the students ahead of you.

We hope you will enjoy the meet-up events!