Office Hours & Consultations

Come discuss data-driven research ideas, problems, implementations, etc. with our team of dedicated data scientists to help formulate your research questions, approaches, and learning plans.

DATALAB WEEKLY (VIRTUAL) OFFICE HOURS SCHEDULE*

MONDAYS 1:30-3PM: GENERAL HELP VIA ZOOM (PASSWORD: DATALAB).

Drop-ins are welcome.  If you require more extensive help, you may be requested to schedule a consultation.

How do virtual office hours work?

1. Review the Zoom tips, below, to prepare for the call.
2. Join the Zoom office hours call on Mondays between 1:30-3pm to enter the main room. You will need to enter the password (datalab) to join.
3. Introduce yourself by typing into the chat window your full name, UC Davis affiliation (what department or grad group you are in), and a brief 1-2 sentence description of the problem you want help with.
4. A DataLab member in the main room will then assign you to the most appropriate breakout room where you can talk with one of our data scientists about your problem.
5. Copy and paste the intro information you posted in the main room into the chat window in your assigned breakout room to introduce yourself to y our helper.
6. You can switch back to the main room or leave the call at any time. Please type “bye” in the chat window before you leave so we know that you intentionally left and that it wasn’t a dropped connection.

Similar to in person office hours, we are often helping multiple people at once. We appreciate your patience and help following the steps above to create a smoother experience for everyone. If our queue is long and/or you have a particularly challenging or complex problem, we may ask you to come back the following week.

Please note that our Fridays 2-4pm General & Health Sciences (Blaisdell Medical Library, Sacramento) office hours are not available at this time. We encourage you to join the virtual Zoom office hours on Mondays. If you are a researcher working on COVID-19 and need immediate assistance with a data science challenge contact us at datalab@ucdavis.edu and we will try to get back to you as soon as possible.

*Please note exceptions for University holidays and academic breaks.

ZOOM TIPS FOR VIRTUAL OFFICE HOURS

New to Zoom? Here are some resources to check out before you join a call.

• Get started. https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362033-Getting-Started-on-Windows-and-Mac
• Use the chat feature. https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/203650445-In-Meeting-Chat
• Share your screen. During office hours we may ask you to share your screen so we can see your code. Note that you are sharing your screen with your DataLab host and everyone in your breakout room. How to share your screen: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362153-How-Do-I-Share-My-Screen-
• Raise your hand. Sometimes we will ask you to use Zoom’s nonverbal features to help facilitate a conversation. You can learn more about them, here: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115001286183-Nonverbal-Feedback-DuringMeetings
• Give us remote control. Sometimes when debugging it’s helpful for you to give us remote control of your screen. Here’s how to do it: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362673-Request-or-Give-Remote-Control
• Virtual reality. Wait, are you really in the Library right now? Isn’t it closed?! You are correct, DataLab is working remotely at this time and we’re not really in Shields Library. Some of our staff will use photos of our favorite library for the  background in our Zoom calls. Depending on your hardware, you can use a VR background too! How to set one up: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/210707503-Virtual-Background

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