TA Essentials

TA Tips

• Listen to your students!
  • Corollary: Learn their names -- it comes in handy later on.
• Practice makes perfect
• Make your students do all the hard work
• An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of flimflam
• Determine your availability
• Know your resources
• You are not *average*. You are a student in one of the best universities in the country.

Tricks of the trade

• You can move rooms, for nearly any reason (send requests to soda-rooms@cs.berkeley.edu)
• You can reserve alcoves in Soda for OH (same address as above)
• For those of you with offices, you can still get other rooms. That is, you don't need to use your office for OH.
• You can reserve classrooms, including the Woz, for review sessions
• You can get a copy card for running off section handouts from the Soda front desk or your professor
• You can get new dry erase markers at the main office in Soda
• Whatever you write on the board will be gone by the next day!
• You can get a key card access to the upper floors and Woz if needed
• You can request multimedia equipment

What are your responsibilities?

• Interacting with your students
  • In person: section (1-2x per week), lecture (1-3x per week), lab (1-2x per week), office hours (2-3 hours per week)
  • Electronically: email, newsgroups, WWW, instant messenger
  • Helping them out with projects
  • Helping them deal with their project partners
  • Achieving a balance between answering questions and fostering self-reliance.
• Interacting with the professor
  • Weekly meetings to review material to cover in section
  • Reviewing the syllabus for the course
  • Asking questions about the material
  • Learning about their expectations (and yours)
  • Giving lecture feedback (tact is important)
  • Relaying student feedback
  • Determining how important are grades
  • Discuss plagiarism policies
  • Never argue with professor in public (especially not in lecture)
  • Never insult the professor to your students
• Preparing for section
  • How many hours do you need?
  • Where do you get ideas?
    • Talk with the professor
    • The other GSIs in the course
    • The book
    • Points that lecture missed or did badly
    • You took this class in college -- use your old notes!
    • Questions from Office Hours/Email
    • Old tests
  • Prepare an outline
  • Practice to your roommate or to another GSI before section.
    • Don't waste time in your first section of the day because you haven't practiced an explanation.
• Running a section
  • Write down an outline of things to do that day
  • Write down future events of concern to students (tests, due dates)
  • How to cover all of your topics
  • Sticking to the outline (or not)
  • Go with the flow
  • Socratic method
  • Asking questions to your class
  • Answering students' questions
  • Discuss applications, not just theory. Usually the professors gives them more theory than they want. It's up to you to give them a little grounding in reality.
  • Bring props
  • Handouts, handouts, handouts
  • When to do administrivia -- in the middle.
  • When to give back tests -- at the beginning (otherwise you'll watch them squirm for an hour)
  • Teach to the middle, not the top nor the bottom
  • How to use the board
    • Look at the students, not at the board
    • Erase up and down, not side to side (physical demonstration)
    • Write bigger than you think you need to
    • Use colors! (make sure students can seem them)
  • Pay attention to your students (look for glazed eyes)
  • Monitor the energy flow of your students
  • Play games!
    • Human Cons Cell Jeopardy (CS61a)
    • Lost on the Moon
    • Compiler Jeopardy!
  • Tailor examples to very little writing, lots of interaction/explanation. If you need to spend a lot of time writing it, put it on a handout.
  • Use the computer in your classroom for demos/presentations.
• Running a Lab
  • In CS, this can be boring.
  • Watch over your class and ask each group questions proactively.
  • Notice students who are in trouble and slow-going.
  • NEVER drive the computer/equipment for a student (unless it's to fix something that is totally irrelevant to the class that the student will never ever need to know or see again.)
  • Ditto.
  • Office Hours
    • In your office or somewhere else?
    • Scaling to the number of students
      • Few students: personal instruction, one on one
      • More students: mini-recitation-style
      • Many students (like before a test): move to a bigger room, essentially do a recitation (but find out what they want to hear about (usually everything.
    • Scheduling: Do them when students can make, not when is convenient for you.
  • Other forms of communication
    • Email
      • Be available for your students
      • Answer promptly or write back saying you need more time.
      • Keep of list of class email addresses
    • Instant Messenger
    • Newsgroup
    • Web pages
    • Phone
  • Grading: assignments, tests, projects
  • Making up homework
  • Making up test questions
  • Project maintenance
  • Debugging exams and homework
  • Hanging out with other TAs
  • Going to lecture (and not sleeping)
  • Dealing with problem students
  • Holding review sessions for tests
  • Making up review sheets and sample problems for students to solve (usually helpful but optional)