Lab sections and Grading

• Mentor visits -- how did they go? Submit short report:
  1. Your name
  2. Visit info: TA name, class, date of visit
  3. Some things you thought the TA did well
  4. Some areas of improvement
  5. Any additional comments
• Lab time
  • Systems issues?
  • Are the students moving up to the white board during discussion?
  • Be authoritative!
  • Plan out specific tasks for the 3 hours. Design the lab assignments such that students won't leave early. Give small assignments, require they show progress on programming homeworks, etc. HELP THEM BECOME DISCIPLINED IN THEIR STUDIES!! Our students are very undiscplined; 2/3 drop out of CS -- let's turn that around. Many just need to LEARN HOW TO LEARN -- they just don't know, and never had to learn in high school.
• Tips on running a good discussion section
  • Prepare well beforehand
  • Get students to move up to the white board so you have their attention
  • Face students when talking, speak loudly and slowly
    • One of the most consistent student complaints is that they can't understand their TAs. Only a small part of this is due to accent, in my opinion -- most of this is due instead to TAs speaking to quitely, and speaking too quickly. Practice speaking very loudly and slowly -- it feels a bit strange at first, but you get used to it!
    • Use *movement*, *pauses*, and *repeated sentences* to accentuate important points.
  • Any presentation has three components:
    • Information
    • Motivation
    • Entertainment
    Lab presentations are maybe 70% information, 20% motivation, and 10% entertainment. Most TAs (especially those not very comfortable speaking) ignore the latter two. Excite the students about the subject matter! Tell why it's cool. Crack some jokes once in a while. Have fun with TA'ing.
• Grading
  • You learned how to use the department turnin program at the systems training session earlier.
  • Learn how to run the turned-in programs. Ask more experienced TAs for help (perhaps your mentor partner).
  • Department information for graders is here .
  • We'll have a 302 class just on grading later in the quarter. For now, a summary of important points:
    • Printing (from the above grader link): Use a2ps to print ASCII to the printer. "a2ps -o output.ps source.cpp" creates output.ps, which you can print using "lpr -Pmailroom output.ps" To save paper and printing time, create one postscript file of all assignments. Go to the turnin directory (e.g., ~/cs10/as1), and type: a2ps -o output.ps -A2 `find ./ -follow -iname '*'.h -o -iname '*'.cpp -o -iname '*'.cc|grep ONTIME`
      Postscript files can be viewed before printing using "gv output.ps"
    • When printing a large file, try to print during non-peak hours.
  • Make a rubric that says how many points are given for what. For programming assignments in lower-division courses, for example, a rubric might be: Whitespace 20%, Comments 20%, Compound statements 20%, Naming conventions 20%, Program specific items 20%. For homeworks, decide which problems get how many points, and then break down the points for each problem. I suggest you give much of the points for showing proper work -- not just writing down an answer.
  • Require a makefile, "make all" should compile all binaries.
  • See CS dept style guidelines for the department's guidelines on programming style.
  • I suggest you make the scale on all assignments the same: if homework 1 is worth 10 points, then make homework 2 worth 10 points too, not 20 points (unless homework 2 is actually worth twice as much).
  • Look for cases of cheating (copying)! For homeworks, keep an eye open, compare suspicious homeworks -- make a photocopy if you are not sure, so you can check them later. There's an automated program (MOSS) we'll be discussing later to help with comparing programs. We'll cover what to do with cheating cases later. But be aware that the department in general pursues these matters -- don't let cheating slide by because it's less work to ignore the matter!!!!!
  • Give you instructor feedback as to how long things take to grade. While grading is a central part of a TA's duties, grading time is a limited resource that must be used wisely and effectively.
  • Ask the instructor what the scores should look like. I usually tell my graders to all of the points if the student demonstrates understanding of the problem -- so that there should be a lot of 10/10's on my homeworks (I think students get discouraged if we grade too harshly). I differentiate student grades more on exams -- homeworks and labs are more for learning and less for grade differentiation in my courses. Talk to your instructor to ensure you understand his goals with graded materials.
  • If grading resources are very limited, discuss with your instructor the idea of grading only a subset of the problems, or doing a very light grading of some problems.