Expected Preparations:

  Writing:
Basic essay and report writing skills. How to format submitted materials; How to quote; How to cite.
  
  If you are not already familiar with the prior knowledge listed above, you need to prepare yourself from other information sources.  
Keywords: Hints for asking technical questions on mailing lists and forums
Objectives:

This unit will …

  • … direct you to three documents that discuss strategies for asking technical questions;

 Outcomes:

After working through this unit you …

  • … are familar with effective strategies for asking technical questions;

  • … understand the importance of MWE’s (Minimal Working Examples);

  • … have begun to model these principles in your own work for this course and elsewhere.

Deliverables:

Time management: Before you begin, estimate how long it will take you to complete this unit. Then, record in your course journal: the number of hours you estimated, the number of hours you worked on the unit, and the amount of time that passed between start and completion of this unit.

Journal: Document your progress in your Course Journal. Some tasks may ask you to include specific items in your journal. Don’t overlook these.

Insights: If you find something particularly noteworthy about this unit, make a note in your insights! page.

Evaluation:

NA: This unit is not evaluated for course marks.

Contents

We all depend on others’ insights and help to get computing done. But there are good ways to ask technical questions, that will lead to quick and useful answers, and other ways…

Task…

Study the following three documents:

If you follow this advice, you can’t go wrong.

Questions, comments

If in doubt, ask! If anything about this contents is not clear to you, do not proceed but ask for clarification. If you have ideas about how to make this material better, let’s hear them. We are aiming to compile a list of FAQs for all learning units, and your contributions will count towards your participation marks.

Improve this page! If you have questions or comments, please post them on the Quercus Discussion board with a subject line that includes the name of the unit.

References

Page ID: FND-Technical_questions

Author:
Boris Steipe ( <boris.steipe@utoronto.ca> )
Created:
2017-08-05
Last modified:
2022-09-14
Version:
1.1
Version History:
–  1.1 Maintenance
–  1.0 Completed to first live version
–  0.1 Material collected from previous assignments
Tagged with:
–  Unit
–  Live

 

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