Teaching Assistant Information

Student Assignments:

We will divide the students into lab sections. Each TA will be assigned to a section. The assigned TA will grade all the course work for the students in their assigned section. If all the TAs want to arrange something else, that is fine with me as long as it is fair in splitting the workload and the TAs agree to this new arrangement.

Office Hours:

You must hold about 3 hours of office hours each week. It is often best to hold them the day before the homework is due, but I would like you to split them up across two or three days. Please post your office hours to the class or put them on your personal web page so the students know when they can reach you. During office hours, you will answer questions related to course material and related to grading.

Workload:

There will be 8 or 9 homework assignments, 6 to 8 quizzes, and one final exam. Each TA will grade all the course work for the students assigned to them. The homeworks are usually longer, but you can often skim them for correctness or focus on critical sections for grading. I will try to make the quizzes and the final easier to grade.

Responsiveness:

It is important to grade the homeworks and quizzes and return the homeworks to the students within a week of being submitted. You must post the scores to the class web site or to your personal web site each week. Be sure to let the students know where you will be posting their scores. Always, use only the last four digits of their student ID for listing scores to ensure student privacy. It is important to grade each course work within a week of submission and to post the running scores weekly. This is important for two reasons: 1) the students like to know how they are doing and 2) it helps keep TAs from getting backed-up and hopelessly swamped. If you find the grading is taking you too long, you must find a way to streamline. Your average weekly workload shouldn't be more than 20 hours per week over the 11 weeks of the quarter. Some weeks (like the first week) will be easier than others (like the last week with a quiz and homework followed by a final exam).

Quiz Control:

Keep the quizzes under your control, but let students view them in your office hours or in section if time allows. You may let them view the answer keys, but don't let them copy down any of the quiz. Also, each TA will run a discussion section and a lab each week. Be sure to be there on-time (or slightly early) each week. During discussion, you will often proctor the quiz and you may answer questions related to the homework assignments if time permits. I will make the quiz copies, but each TA must get them from me or from Grace Wu before the discussion section. During lab, you will collect and/or evaluate homework assignments and help with student programming difficulties. You do not need to tutor any students. For students who need tutoring, you may want to recommend they check out LARC.

Substitution:

If for some important reason (like illness) you can't make your lab or discussion, you must find a suitable substitute from the other TAs from the class. You should make an appropriate swap of work to make the exchange fair.

Weekly TA meetings:

We will have a (short) meeting each week to coordinate. If you need my signature on a timesheet, please bring it to the weekly TA meeting. When filling out timesheets, note you are generally not allowed to work on holidays, so be sure you don't report hours then.

Weekly Preparation:

It is important that each TA prepare for discussion section each week by 1) comming to the TA meeting and picking up the quiz copies, 2) looking over next weeks homework assignment and prepare a short presentation of what the homework will be (and be prepared to answer student questions about the new homework), and 3) bring the graded homework, if any, to return to the students.

ASE Union Information:

Name of the Faculty Member to whom the ASE will report:

Dr Raymond Klefstad

Work location

TA Office, TA assigned discussion room, TA assigned lab room

Class assignment

ECE 10 Lec, Lab, Discussion

Number of required midterms, finals and papers for the course

No Midterms, no papers, 8 to 9 homeworks, 6 to 8 quizzes, and one final exam.

Office hours per week

3 hours per week outside of lab and discussion

Training or orientation courses specifically related to the teaching assignment

None.

Attendance at lectures

Not required, but suggested if it is your first-time TAing this course.

Course syllabus

on-line at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~klefstad/s/10.html

Supplmental duties:

lead discussion sections

Laboratory Preparation:

Prepare for laboratory sessions, conduct trial runs, prepare necessary materials, etc. Conduct and supervise laboratory class

Grades/Finals

Assist with calculation of final grades Prepare grade sheets as an MS Excel spreadsheet and deliver to faculty member Grade assignments (homeworks, quizzes, final exam)

Electronic Communications:

Post all grades for student work on electronic bulletin boards Create a website for your section and post student grades weekly Send announcements to students via listserv reply to student questions via email

Readers:

Will grade homeworks, quizzes, and finals as assigned to the Reader. Readers will help TAs with grading as agreed beforehand by the course instructor.