As you read through most documents (assuming you are logged in under your own account rather than as a guest), you will occasionally come across a small icon like the one appearing at the start of this paragraph. Clicking on this icon (go ahead and try it) will open up a list of "discussion threads" that students and/or instructors have created to discuss this document. Clicking on one of the items in that list will take you to that discussion. Try it now, and read up on how to add your own replies to an existing discussion thread.

Reading through a document with existing discussion threads is the electronic equivalent of sitting in a lecture and having one of your classmates raise their hand to ask a question. In many cases, that question and its answer may help you learn more about the topic under discussion. In some cases, you may know the answer and be able to supply it. You are encouraged to do so, so that you and your classmates together are able to get prompt answers to any questions you may have.

What if you have a new question or comment of your own? In a conventional lecture, you would raise your hand and, when recognized, speak to the class. The electronic equivalent, when you are reading a document in this website, is to create a new discussion thread attached to a paragraph of that document. To do this, click on the icon at the top of the page. You will be stepped through a process of selecting the paragraph you want to discuss and then of preparing your comment or question.

If you like, go and try opening up a new discussion thread targeted at this paragraph.

Part of the art of asking good questions or of initiating a good discussion is to pick the right document. If the question or comment comes to mind because fo something you are reading, the choice is obvious. If a question occurs to you at other times, however, give a little time and thought to the appropriate document. For example, if you have a question about a programming assignment, go to the page describing that assignment and ask it there. If you have a question about course policies and procedures, you should probably seek out the appropriate section of the course syllabus and attach your question there.

When you create a thread, you have the option of marking it as "Public" or "Private". A public thread can be read by everyone enrolled in the course. A private thread can be read only by the person who created the thread and by the course instructors. In general, any thread in which you discuss all or part of your solution to an assignment or quiz, even if you are only speculating on possible solutions, should be marked as private. Questions about a specific grade that you received should be private. Everything else should probably be public.

The course instructors may, if they feel it appropriate, change private threads to public and vice-versa. They may alter or edit your posts to remove content that they feel should not appear in a public thread (e.g., code for solving part of an assignment).

In general, the Forum should be your primary means of asking questions in this course. Although you have been provided in the course syllabus with an email address to contact the instructor, email should generally be used only for questions that can't, by their nature, be asked in the Forum (the website is down, your password doesn't work, the website won't accept your registration, etc.) or for which you can't find an appropriate document related to the question (e.g., notifying the instructor that you will be unable to attend a midterm exam).

If you send e-mail to the instructor that should, in the instructor's opinion, have been posted to the Forum, the instructor may copy your e-mail into the Forum and reply there. Conversely, if you post something in the Forum that the instructor feels is inappropriate, the instructor may remove your post and reply, if necessary, via email.

Finally, note that the Forum is an official part of this course. Students posting in the Forum are expected to conform to the norms for civility and respect for ones' classmates and instructors that are common to all on-campus speech and writing.

An RSS feed is signalled by this icon: .

The main feed for the course is on the announcements page. This feed tracks all new announcements and all postings to public threads. Instructors get a slightly different feed, which tracks posts to both public and private threads.

In addition to the main feed, if you create (or are added to) a private thread, you will be offered a feed on that thread's page that will allow you to be notified of any postings to that particular thread. Instructors do not get offered this feed, as their normal feed already includes all private threads.

If you want to take advantage of the course's RSS feeds, you must

There are a lot of RSS readers out there, including a number of high-quality ones that are available for free. Increasingly, RSS capability is being built into web browsers, email readers, and other programs, though stand-alone RSS reader programs are still quite common.

In my own experience, the most important ways in which RSS readers differ is in

A summary of some free RSS feeders I have looked at (feel free to add comments in the Forum if you try these or if you come across others that you think should be listed):

Reader	notification	subscription	notes
FireFox web browser	passive	RSS icon appears in web address, or via bookmark manager	Also check out some of the RSS-oriented extensions. Sage, for example, provides a nice display with more information about each change item.
Google Desktop	active: systray popup	automatically subscribes to visited pages (optional)	I wouldn't install the Google Desktop just to get the RSS reader. It does a lot of other useful stuff, though. <br></br> I believe that the same RSS facility is also packaged with Google's gmail service.
SharpReader	active: systray popup	drag URL	standalone program
RSS Bandit	popup alerts	multiple, including auto-detect	Standalone program, tightly couples with Internet Explorer and Firefox. Includes features for searching/filtering items. Open-source project.