IBIEM Communication

You are always welcome to ask questions before, during, and after class or make an appointment with any of the IBIEM Staff. Here are guidelines for electronic communication:

1. Technical questions and discussion for the course should be posted to the Issues part of the IBIEM/community repository on Github. Examples include questions about R, Github, submitting assignments, problems with the IBIEM computing environment, and answers to your own questions. Note that this is a public repository, so don't post anything you don't want the whole Internet to see, but also remember that if you have a technical question, you are probably not the only one. See Posting an Issue below for details.

2. Non-technical questions should be emailed directly to the appropriate IBIEM Staff.

Posting an Issue

To access Issues click here or on the Issues tab above (the one between Code and Pull requests, not the Issues link at the very top of the page).

To start a new thread, create a new issue.

You can use the "Search" feature on this repository to find things.

Guidelines for posting questions

• First search existing issues (open or closed) for answers. If the question has already been answered, you're done! If there is an open issue, feel free to contribute to it. Or feel free to open a closed issue if you believe the answer is not satisfactory.
• Give your issue an informative title.
  • Good: "Error: could not find function "ggplot""
  • Bad: "R giving errors", "help me!", “aaaarrrrrgh!” Note that you can edit an issue’s title after it's been posted.
• Format your questions nicely using markdown and code formatting. Preview your issue prior to posting.
• Where appropriate, provide links to specific files, or even lines within them, in the body of your issue. This will help your helper understand your question. Note that only the teaching team will have access to private repos.
• (Optional) To get the attention of a specific person or group, tag them. Start by typing the @ symbol and GitHub will generate some good suggestions. You can also type or paste in the GitHub username yourself. Examples: to tag Josh, use @granek; to tag all IBIEM staff use @ibiem-2020/staff, to tag a class/team mate use their GitHub username. Its not a bad idea to tag any posts with @ibiem-2020/staff to be sure that instructors and TAs get a notification.
• Hit "Submit new issue" when you're ready to post.