Help Room Queue -- Overview & Feedback
Help Room Queue -- Overview & Feedback
We're building a digital queue system for the Physics Help Room to replace the whiteboard sign-up and Google Sheet schedule. This document explains what the system does, what it means for you, and asks for your input on a few design decisions.
You can also explore the interactive mockups to see what the system would look like.
What you get: insight into your courses
The biggest change for faculty is visibility into what students are struggling with. The system captures what topics students ask about and makes this available to you as anonymous, aggregate analytics.
You'll be able to see:
- Topic trends by week: "Week 7 of PHYS 1110: 12 visits about torque, 8 about Newton's third law"
- Demand patterns: Which days and times your students most need help
- Category breakdown: Homework vs. lab vs. exam prep vs. conceptual questions
This data contains no student names or identifiers. You see course-level patterns, not individual student records.
See mockup: Course Analytics
How the system works
For students
Students scan a QR code at their table (or visit the website) and fill out a short form: select their course, describe what they need help with, and choose whether to display their name on room monitors or appear anonymously. They see their queue position and estimated wait time on their phone and can cancel at any time.
See mockups: Student Sign-Up | Queue Status
For helpers (TAs, LAs, faculty)
Helpers check in on their phone when they arrive. The dashboard shows the current queue -- tap "Call Next" to claim the next student, see their topic, and mark the session complete when done. Helpers can toggle to "On Break" when they need a pause.
See mockups: Helper Dashboard | Helper Check-In
Room displays
TV monitors in the help room show the current queue, wait times, and helper availability. Students who opted for anonymity appear as "Student #3" instead of their name.
See mockups: Queue Display | By Course
Your role in the system
Managing your helpers
If you have TAs or LAs assigned to your course sections, you can add and remove them through the system. You can only manage helpers for your own course sections.
See mockup: Helper Assignment
Faculty who staff the help room themselves
If you teach a course and work in the help room yourself (without TAs), you can check in directly as a helper. The system already knows which courses you teach -- no extra setup needed.
Schedule management
The weekly helper schedule currently maintained in a Google Sheet will move into the system. The coordinator will have a schedule builder with:
- Time slot x day grid (matching the current spreadsheet format)
- Add/remove helpers to time slots with their course assignment
- Notes for special circumstances (e.g., "Helproom in use for PHYS exams on Thurs nights")
- Semester-scoped schedules
See mockup: Weekly Schedule
Privacy and data approach
We take student privacy seriously. Here's how the system handles data:
While a student is in the queue: Their name, course, and help topic are visible to helpers so they can provide assistance. If the student opted in, their first name appears on room monitors.
After the session ends: Student session records are retained for the semester to support session history, helper performance tracking, and program reporting. After the semester ends, identifying information is automatically purged. Access to this data is restricted to authorized help room staff.
What we keep permanently: Anonymous records that capture the course, week of semester, general time of day, topic description, and how long the session lasted. These records have no student name, no student ID, no helper name -- nothing that could identify who was involved. This is the data that powers the faculty analytics dashboards.
The key principle: We can tell you "In Week 7, 12 PHYS 1110 students asked about torque on Tuesday afternoons, and sessions averaged 15 minutes." We cannot tell you which students those were.
We'd like your input
We've made preliminary decisions on these items, but want your input before building.
1. Helper preferences
Current plan: Students can optionally request a specific helper when joining the queue.
Question: Is this useful, or does it create problems? (e.g., one popular helper gets overloaded while others sit idle)
2. Topic categories
Current plan: Students select a category when signing up: Homework, Lab, Exam Prep, Conceptual Understanding, Math/Calculation Skills, Software/Tools, Other.
Question: Are these the right categories for your courses? Would you add or remove any?
3. Room TV displays
Current plan: Show student first names (with anonymous option) and course on the monitors.
Question: What information is most useful on the room displays? Should we show anything else (e.g., help topic)? Should we default to anonymous and let students opt in to showing their name?
4. Analytics views
Current plan: Topic trends by week, demand heatmap (day x hour), category distribution.
Question: What analytics would be most valuable for improving your teaching? Is there data you wish you had about help room usage?
5. Queue hours
Current plan: Students can join the queue anytime the help room is open, even outside scheduled helper hours (they'll see a warning about no helpers being available).
Question: Should the queue only be active during scheduled hours? Or is it useful for students to "queue up" even before helpers arrive?
6. Your help room role
Question: Do you staff the help room yourself, or do you have TAs/LAs? Or both? This helps us design the right experience for your situation.
7. Helper assignment management
Current plan: Faculty manage helpers for their own course sections. The help room coordinator manages the overall schedule.
Question: Does this division of responsibility make sense? Should anyone else be able to assign helpers?
8. Schedule format
Current plan: Replace the Google Sheet with an in-app schedule builder using the same time-slot x day grid format.
Question: Does the current Google Sheet format capture everything you need? Is there anything about the schedule that the current format doesn't handle well?
How to provide feedback
We're targeting Fall 2026 for launch, with a pilot over the summer. Your feedback now shapes what gets built.
Please review this document and the linked mockups. We'd especially appreciate your thoughts on the design decision questions above.
Send feedback to: Kristopher Bunker (kristopher.bunker@colorado.edu)
Your feedback will be carefully considered as we finalize the design. Thank you for your input.