If you’re a TA in Cosi12b you may be wondering what the duties and expectations are. I wrote this to help you understand not only the hard requirements, but also the softer aspects.
General
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You should share our mission to help all the students in the course learn and be successful. Yes there will be a lot of work (and some may complain) but our goal is that they come out of the course feeling like they really have gotten the hang of programming in general, and Java in particular.
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All of us will bend over backwards to help any student who wants to put in the work to be successful. We will be flexible and open minded about how this happens. We will reconsider any aspect of how the course is taught or graded if there is a reason to think it’s not effective.
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You should know Java well enough that they can easily debug students’ bugs (if they had to.) They should know good code from bad code, be meticulous and well organized. They should hate very long methods and very complicated classes. They should appreciate good naming of variables and clear and intentional code. Here are our “good programming style” guidelines, which we will use when grading submitted homework: http://cosi12b.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/content/resources/10_programming_style.md/
You are our eyes, ears and voice with the students! I hope you take this to heart and do what it takes to make this class and thes students’ experience a great one. When and if you get to a point in the semester where you’re just not into it anymore or are collapsing under time pressure and are phoning it in – let us know and we will find another student to take your place with no hard feelings!
Specific
There is a lead TA who will be the overall organizer and priority setter. Sometimes we may ask a TA to run a special study session, sometimes we may ask for a specific TA to actually be in class, and so on. Other than those special cases..
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TAs will be assigned on a rotating basis to grade Programming assignments, representing 30% of the score for each assignment. We expect you to consider the algorithm, classes, and coding style. Take a look at the Good Programming Style for the a nice summary of the things to look for. If a students’ submission is less that an A- you need to schedule a mandatory 1-1 meeting with them to help them improve.
- You will be responsible for grading, both of PAs and regular homeworks:
- The lead TA will rotate assignments for grading through the TAs to balance things out
- The programming assignments have specific rubrics.
- The Latte based assignments will have rubrics too.
- You will be a mentor to a group of students who will be assigned to you. At a high level, you are responsible to make sure these students don’t fall behind. That means
- Letting them know that you’ve been assigned to them and that you are available for any kind of help they need.
- Regularly checking the scores they are getting for homeworks and programming assignments, and reaching out to them if there’s any hint of a problem.
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You should assume about 5-7 hours per week on average.
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You don’t need to come to the class lectures
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You should organize office hours working with the lead TA. If you notice no or few students come to yours, then let the lead TA know and move it to a better time.
- You should understand the Academic Honesty standards and policies and be part of the early warning system if you feel that something is happening that is not right.
Lead TA
The role of Lead TA in Cosi12b is extra important. Given that my mind and attention is overloaded preparing and teaching each class I look for a lead TA who can take total ownership of the logistics of homework assignments.
This includes ENSURING THAT (vs. doing all this yourselves)
- There’s a PA schedule, and the students understand it
- Keeping us on that schedule
- Each assignment is test-driven, the tests are correct and sufficient, etc
- Each PA is explained during recitation and questions are answered
- All submissions are collected
- 1-1’s are run on time
- Tests are run and grades are computed
- The overall TA team is managed and coordinated
That’s a lot. It means leadership. management and ownership of the process. A more subjective thing is that you will not be a student in this role, you will be a teacher, responsible to all the students and to me. You may be friends, co-workers, colleagues, or even suite mates with one or more students but you need to stay totally objective, confidential, fair and even handed.