CIS307: Instructions to Teaching Assistant

Students will forgive our mistakes if they see that we are trying hard to help them learn. Students will not forgive arrogance or disrespect.

In the lab:

• Spend substantial time in each lab lecturing about the system tools, the homework, problem solving patterns [at least half an hour]. You should have a plan for each lab as to what you want to accomplish. You should have notes, and they should be made available to the students as HTML documents.
• Be sure that the students are not burdened with logistic problems, like how to get documentation. Students should have access to documentation and know how to do all basic activities (from email, to WWW, to tar, to make, to compilation and linking, to debugging, to testing, to submitting homeworks, ...) that are required for the course.
• Be sure that students understand what they are expected to do in homeworks. Create hint pages to help students do better their homeworks.
• The lectures do not spend sufficient time on details of programming, system services, threads, networking. In the lab you need to supplement what is done in class.
• Walk around the lab, answering questions, offering assistance and advice. Be proactive. When you see mistakes, and you see that the student becomes lost, help, perhaps by just asking a question, directing attention to the problem.
• Notice what are frequent errors and point them out to the students with suggested solutions. Give feedback to instructor as to what students seem to understand well, and what poorly.
• Don't worry about how much help you give to students with their homeworks. If they learn by seeing how you do things, that is ok. But be sure that they are paying attention and are learning.

In grading homeworks:

• Compile and run each homework.
• Give feedback that is specific and constructive. You do not need to discover all bugs, faults, or imperfections. But identify and give advice about three, four aspects of the homework that need improvement. And check if in the next homeworks the advice was followed.
• Check for cheating. You are not a police person, so you don't need to trace carefully all homeworks and their relations. And we want to support the learning that takes place when students discuss problems with each other, and help each other. But we want to find and punish cases where copying, as a form of avoiding work, and thinking, and learning is taking place. If you discover or suspect cheating, discuss immediately the case with the instructor.
• Deadlines for homeworks must be respected: after a homework is due a new homework is given and the student has to focus on the new homework, not the old one. Homeworks should be submitted by the students through email. Late homework must be sent to the instructor who will give detailed feedback to the student, but will not give any credit.
• Homeworks should be graded in a timely and fair fashion. Graded homeworks should be returned by email to the students within at most one week from the deadline.
• Above all remember that homeworks are a wonderful learning opportunity for students. Do all that you can to make sure that learning is taking place. Grades are of secondary importance. In the long run, with many homeworks and exams, students will get the grades they deserve [or close to it].

In contact hours and by email:

• You should schedule four contact hours (two hours per section) in your office to answer student questions. When students come with questions, be kind and helpful. But try to help students ask precise questions like "I understand this, but I do not understand that, since I do not follow these transition steps".
• Outside of the scheduled hours use your judgement on how much to make yourself available to students. But in all cases, be very polite and explicit about what you can and cannot do.
• Check your email frequently and answer questions in a timely fashion. Replies should be given within 24 hours, if possible, within the same day they were asked.

You should exchange email with the instructor on all matters that affect the course. You should meet in person with the instructor at least once every two weeks. If you have not been previously the TA of the instructor in this course, you should sit in the lecture to get a better feel of what is stressed and what students know or are expected to know.
You should create the following documents:

• web pages with notes of what you present in each lab
• web pages with hints on how to solve homeworks
• references to documentation on how to use tools
• a FAQ for the course, where you write answers to all frequent question and to problems encountered by you and students in the course.