ENGR 101 | University of Michigan

Course Norms and Expectations For Communication

Overview

ENGR 101 is a mix of asynchronous work and in-person work this term, so we will do some things online and some things in-person.

Homeworks

The core class content will be delivered to you via interactive work hosted on PrairieLearn. This work is done asynchronously and allows you to go at your own pace.

Lectures

Student feedback on the asynchronous homework has been very positive; however, your professors still want to see you! We will have in-person lectures that will give you an opportunity to practice your ENGR 101 skills with your instructor as well as provide an opportunity to ask questions about homework, lab, projects, and anything else.

Labs

Many past students have said that labs are one of the most useful parts of ENGR 101 because those are the times when you really get to work with other people, so we want to focus your “in-person/in-class” time on labs.

You can think of your lab as a working meeting with your lab group. A working meeting is a meeting in which you are actively working with other people to get work accomplished. When they are done well, working meetings leave you with a sense of pride at a job well done. We will do our very best to make sure our ENGR 101 working meetings are a valuable time in your day.

Office Hours

Office hours are another part of ENGR 101 that past students have found incredibly valuable. In-person office hours are the most effective because we can draw on whiteboards, better sense any frustrations you have, and have longer conversations about the course and how the concepts and skills we learn can be applied to engineering problems. But the asynchronous Q&A on Piazza is also useful, whether you have a quick clarifying question or you’ve narrowed down where in your code you have a problem and you need another set of eyes on your code to see what you’ve done wrong.

What are Norms?

One of the best ways to ensure a meeting is productive is to set norms for the meeting. Norms are a set of patterns or behaviors that a group of people agree to follow. This definition makes it seem like norms are really restrictive rules that will stifle all the creativity out of the group, right? They don’t, though!

We (the staff) have been on a lot of meetings, both virtual and in-person, and you probably have too. We’ve been learning about how we want to organize our ENGR 101 meetings by watching what works well in these meetings and what doesn’t. We have noticed that setting norms for a meeting is particularly helpful in having productive meetings. Setting norms for each meeting just means that someone presents a slide with reminders of what to do/not do for that particular meeting. This is really helpful because we all go to a lot of different types of meetings, and it can be confusing as to what we’re supposed to be doing at each one. Seeing that reminder of the norms for the meeting can be reassuring because you know what you’re supposed to be doing and you know that everyone else will also be doing the same thing.

We can also set norms for our overall work in ENGR 101. U-M brings together people from all over the world with all kinds of different backgrounds and work styles and preferences. Our interactions in ENGR 101, especially when working in lab groups, will be much smoother if we set norms for work and help each other remember these norms.

Norms for Our Work in ENGR 101

These are the norms for our work in ENGR 101:

Fun Fact: These norms are used with permission from the Center for Research and Learning on Teaching: Foundational Course Initiative. Prof. Alford (and the other instructors) worked with this group, and they used these norms at the very beginning of a three year project with ENGR 101. Prof. Alford really liked how these norms were phrased, so she asked if she could use them for ENGR 101. And of course they were very happy to share! You will probably find yourself doing a lot of this kind of learning in college: “Hey, I saw this person do this thing and it worked really well, so now I’m going to do it too!”

Norms for Interactions in Labs

Labs are held in one of two CAEN labs in Pierpont Commons. These rooms are set up “studio style” with group workstations set up for your lab groups. We have found that this type of furniture arrangement both encourages group work and makes your group work easier because you can face each other.

Here are our general norms for in-person lab meetings:

If there are additional accommodations that we can provide for you that will help you to fully participate in labs, please let us know.

Norms for Interactions in Office Hours

In-person office hours are held in our office hours room, B521 Pierpont. Here are our general norms for interacting with people at office hours:

Norms for Interactions on Piazza

Piazza is our online course forum for asynchronous Q&A, posting opportunities around campus, and general community building. Students can post questions, notes, and reply to questions and notes. Our norms for work in ENGR 101 apply when posting on Piazza. Additionally, we have the following norms that are specific to Piazza.

The Welcome Post on Piazza has additional information and guidance on how to make the best use of Piazza in ENGR 101.

Expectations for Communication

One of our norms for work in ENGR 101 is “communicate proactively…” Communication is critical to your success as an engineer, and we will be able to help you more effectively in ENGR 101 if you communicate your needs to us as soon as possible. One of the most common needs for communication is if you have to miss a class meeting for something or if you missed a class meeting because you were sick. In all cases, communicating your situation to course staff as soon as possible is very important.

Expectations for Communicating with Instructors

You will have weekly meetings with a GSI or IA as part of your lab meeting. But you might find yourself needing to communicate information to us outside of that time. Since ENGR 101 is taught as one large course, the best way to make sure we know about something is to email the course staff at engr101staff@umich.edu – this address reaches all the instructors, GSIs, and IAs. You are free to email one of us individually if you are looking to talk with a specific person, though! We are all very happy to talk with any of our students.

When emailing an instructor or course staff, doing these things will help them get back to you as soon as possible:

If you are emailing someone for the first time, take a moment to find out what their professional title should be when addressing them in an email. Everyone at U-M is listed on a website somewhere and you can figure out what their title should be. If you are unsure of their title, you can default to “Prof.” for any faculty member at the University because that is a somewhat default professional title. If you end up talking with a person more than a few times, you can ask them how they prefer to be addressed, and then you can use that in the future.

Expectations for Communicating with Group Members

You will be working in lab groups each week, and it will be important to have good communication with this group so that your meetings will be productive. We’ve already talked about norms for the lab meeting itself, but you will probably need to communicate with your lab group outside of the lab meeting. When communicating with a group or team, doing these things will help your group or team function well: