Table of contents
FAQ
Before contacting anyone, it’s worth skimming through this FAQ (or using the full-text search above) to see if your question is answered there.
I need help understanding a concept from the unit. What should I do?
You have several good options:
- Ask a question in the unit team (link TBD), and a TA or lecturer will answer within one working day. Try to make your question specific, though - “I don’t understand the link between truth tables and electrical signals” will get you a more helpful response than “I don’t understand gates”.
- Ask a question in the weekly Q&A, which you can do either in the room or anonymously via Padlet. I’ll prioritise questions about the current week’s material, but you can ask questions about earlier weeks as well.
- Ask a lecturer or TA during one of the Tuesday live sessions or Thursday labs.
- Attend one of the weekly Monday office hours or TA drop-in sessions (on most other days) and ask a lecturer or TA there.
- Take a look at the recommended readings for the week here to get a different view on the topic from the lecture notes.
- If all else fails, try Google! Nothing in this unit is so obscure you can’t find good sources online.
There are two things we’d ask you not to do:
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Please don’t email the lecturers or TAs directly. This is a hard unit, and it’s very unlikely you’re the only one who’s having trouble with the concept you’re stuck on, so it’s much better to ask in the unit team - that way, everyone gets to benefit from the answer. This is especially true if you’ve found an error in the slides or videos - if you’re right then everyone needs to know anyway, and if you’re wrong then other people are probably confused about the same thing!
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Don’t ask ChatGPT. It’s not against the rules (since the assignments don’t count towards your final grade), but it’s still a bad idea. The problem is that it “doesn’t know what it doesn’t know”, leading to very authoritative-sounding answers that are often partially or totally wrong - there’s a real risk that it leaves you more confused than you were when you started. This goes double or triple given that the architecture the unit is built around is designed for educational use and ChatGPT doesn’t have much information about it in its training data.
I think I’ve found an error in the notes or a Blackboard quiz. What should I do?
Get in contact with us, ideally via the unit team - if you’re right, then other people get to hear about the error, and if you’re wrong, then other people get to hear the explanation. Even if it turns out you’re wrong, we will never, ever be angry or annoyed at you for bringing it up! Nobody’s perfect, including us, and wanting to make the unit better is something we can all get behind.
What are the late penalties on Blackboard quizzes?
Blackboard quizzes are optional and don’t count towards your marks for the unit, so there are no late penalties - just try to get them done the week of the corresponding live session.
Wait, the Q&A Padlet is completely anonymous? And I can submit images? *Grins malevolently*
It’s still moderated - all Padlet posts need to be approved before they’ll show up. ;-) We have a standing policy of approving cat pictures, though.
Contact details
Kira Clements (email address kira.clements@bristol.ac.uk) will be teaching the first half of the unit in weeks 1-4.
John Lapinskas (email address john.lapinskas@bristol.ac.uk) will be teaching the second half of the unit in weeks 5 and 7-11. He is also the unit director.
As set out above, please don’t contact us for general questions about the unit - you’ll get much faster answers if you ask on the unit Team or the weekly Q&A instead.
The unit team
Everyone taking this unit should have been added to a Microsoft Team. Access to lecture videos will be restricted to members of this team. If you’ve joined the unit late, you might not have been added - in that case, please email us and we’ll add you ourselves.