Mentor Roles during Legacy Code work

What mentors should be doing while students are assigned to work on legacy code

https://ucsb-cs56-pconrad-mentors.github.io/topics/mentor_roles_during_legacy_code_work

This article describes what mentors should be doing during the time that students are assigned to work on legacy code, such as during these labs:

During each lab meeting, check in with each pair (trio, individual)

The most important thing for you to do during lab is to proactively check in with each pair (or individual or trio) assigned to you that should be there in lab.

The first thing to check is: “did they show up?” If they did not:

The message can be one that asks about their welfare. You can keep it friendly, and you can “assume”, to help them save face, that they are not in lab for a good reason, i.e. that they are sick, had a car accident, etc.

So, ask something like the following. Put it in your own words, using whatever way of communicating is natural for you.

I’m concerned because I didn’t see you in lab.
Is everything ok? I hope you are not sick, and that you were not in an accident, etc. Please check in with me about your progress as soon as you can.
As your mentor, I’m responsible (for my own course grade) to help you succeed in the course as best I can. Please let me know where you stand with (here, mention whatever work is due).

Checking on their progress

The second thing is to check on their progress. Students may have a tendency to be “behind”, say working on lab03, when they should be finished with it by now and working on lab04. Or they may not even have finished lab02.

In this case, encourage them to finish up lab03 (or lab02, or whatever), and try to get them to commit to some timeline for finishing. Ask if they are “stuck” on anything specific.

You are strongly encourage to record this commitment to a timeline in their feedback repo

In general, encourage your mentees to be in touch with you, or post on Piazza, if they run into problems. Remind them that they can post private messages to you on Piazza. Remind them they can include, or not include, their instructors, their pair partners, etc. on those messages.

Handling pull requests