You will have a practicum assignment most weeks, which will involve preparing a presentation, rubric, or other work outside of class to share with a group. The topics and preparation will vary, and will be posted here as they are filled assigned.
As you grow more comfortable and confident presenting, we’ll ask you to focus on the organization, interactivity, and inclusiveness of your micro-teaching discussion.
Prepare a longer (8-minute discussion) section for presenting to your group. The content must be significantly different from your previous practicum presentation, but you could keep the same course context if you’d like (e.g. the follow-up topic in the course). You can aslo use anything you do in your actual discussion section for your class. In your discussion section you should focus on all of the following:
A clear and organized technical explanation Interactivity and ensuring that students understand. You must include an active learning activity that spans 1-4 minutes of your time. Addressing different approaches to the material (i.e. writing, speaking, examples, problems to work) as appropriate Mechanics: speaking style, board work
The exact format of your section is up to you, but you need to complete it in about 8 minutes. You might choose to give examples, worksheets, peer instruction problems, group work, a mini-lecture, or (most likely) some combination.
To make sure there is time for discussion and feedback, only half the students in each group will present in each of the two weeks dedicated to this practicum assignment). If you are not presenting, it is your job to make the experience as authentic for the “TA” as possible: role-play as though you were a student attending discussion section, ask questions when appropriate, and participate.
As before, complete each session by debriefing lessons learned from the presentations of the day.
Select a HW, exam, or assignment question that you graded so far this quarter. Prepare a short presentation (6-8 mins) including:
Context of the assignment: how did students complete the question? did they work individually? how many submissions did you have to grade? how much does the score of this question impact the student’s overall grade? Correct solution and rubric: briefly review what the solution key would have been and what rubric you used. Was the grading effective? For example, were you able to complete it in a timely manner? were students generally accepting of the score they received? What changes would you make to the rubric (or the wording of the question) in the future? Illustrate with specific (anonymized) student examples and what grade they received.
To make sure there is time for discussion and feedback, only half the students in each group will present in each of the two weeks dedicated to this practicum assignment). We will go according to your order - first 3 in week 9 and next 3 in Week 10. If you are not presenting, it is your job to thoughtfully engage with the presentation.
As before, complete each session by debriefing lessons learned from the presentations of the day.
In this week’s practicum activity, you will role-play working with different students in a one-on-one situation (e.g. office hours, or in the lab). Before practicum, you will need to prepare:
In your portfolio, describe at least one question that kept you busy in one of your office or lab hours some week this quarter. This could have been a particularly tricky homework question, a common bug students had in their code, a common misunderstanding about a course assignment, etc. Include the following information
What were you able to do in office hours to help students overcome the hurdles to solving this question?
In the practicum session, you’ll roleplay the TA-student interaction, focusing on specific strategies for tailoring your work to specific student needs. Rotate through the group members, picking one pair at a time where one person is acting the role of TA and the other the role of the student. This pair should use the question that the “TA” described in her/his portfolio in preparation for the session. After letting the student look at the question and “get into character”, play out the pretend office hours interaction for 3-5 minutes (or less, if a natural stopping point occurs; don’t go past 5 minutes so other pairs also have a chance to try out the activity). The rest of the group should be engaged in observing the interaction.
When working with your perplexed student your goal is to get them to understand the problem and be able to generate the correct solution. You should think about how to get them to think about breaking down the problem into something manageable. You might consider giving a simpler example, or having them try to do only part of the problem. Your other main task is to respond to the student on a personal level. Each student has been given a different personality role to play, so part of your challenge will be figuring out the best approach for an individual.
Based on the order in which you are listed in your group in this Piazza post: https://piazza.com/class/jc89yxk1abh3o9?cid=7, you will each been assigned a different “personality”. If you are the first person listed in your group, you will take the first role below; if you are the second, you take the second role, etc. If you are the last student listed and there aren’t enough roles for you, just choose any one of the roles below. Study your role and try to play it as authentically as possible.
Role: The overwhelmed struggling student (Your birth month mod 5 = 0) You are struggling to understand the new material in this class and are down on yourself. You have no idea where to start on this problem, and you are discouraged and just want to give up. You are inclined to become upset and frustrated (though not belligerent). At any moment you feel like you might burst into tears. You just don’t feel like you’ll ever understand.
Role: The over-confident student (Your birth month mod 5 = 1) You think you totally understand everything, but for some reason your program doesn’t work / proof won’t come together. You’ve come to the TA, but you believe that you actually know more than he/she does. You’re not inclined to take the TA’s suggestions, and frequently make comments about how smart you are and how much you know. You know your code doesn’t work, but you feel that it’s Java’s fault, not your own. You have not taken any steps (beyond running your code) to debug it.
Role: The eager but fundamentally confused student (Your birth month mod 5 = 2) You love this class, but you find yourself struggling more than you thought you would. You are desperate to understand and generally good-natured about your misunderstandings. But try as you might, you just don’t seem to “get it”. The TA can explain something over and over, and somehow it just sinks in very, very slowly. In this role, you should get the same question (or type of question) wrong in the same way over and over, but every so often you should get something right.
Role: The shy and quiet student (Your birth month mod 5 = 3) You actually have a pretty good idea about what’s going on, and you “get it,” but you are shy and don’t have confidence in your abilities. You’re pretty sure you know how to solve this problem (and with a little guidance you will be able to complete the problem correctly), but you lack the confidence to start on your own. You just need a little reassurance that you’re on the right track and you’ll be fine. You definitely do not need someone to treat you like you don’t know what you are doing or to start over and explain everything from scratch.
Role: The student who just wants the answer (Your birth month mod 5 = 4) You aren’t really very interested in this class. You’re pretty confused and you don’t feel like putting any mental energy into the assignment. You have come to your TA because you really just want them to tell you the answers. You are not leaving until you have a working solution to the problem. You are not rude to the TA, but just insistent about getting him or her to tell you the answer. However, you should not be so stubborn that you do not respond to the TA’s attempts to engage you in learning, if you feel these attempts are successful.
Once everyone’s had the opportunity to role-play as either the TA or the student, debrief the strategies that worked for the different characters that were played. Were there any effective tools that worked for all students? Were there techniques that worked very well with some, but very poorly with others? If you have more time, switch roles and switch characters.
In this session, you’ll workshop grading strategies that are effective for the specific type of class you’re currently TAing. Coming up with extensive auto-grading and testing scripts is important for classes that are programming heavy, whereas rubrics for large projects or written assignments are used heavily in design or theoretical classes.
Before practicum, draft a rubric for how to grade an assignment in your course. This can be a rubric you’ve already developed, or one you’re currently working on. If you do not have development of rubrics as part of your TA duties, do a little brainstorming and take some notes on how you might develop such a rubric.
During practicum, everyone will have 1 minute to present the following:
Then for the remaining ~30 minutes of practicum, you will, as a group, select one (or possibly two) types of classes from the presented set and compile a “how-to” guide for grading an assignment for your type of class/assignment. Brainstorm the common pitfalls and crowdsource possible solutions. Your guide should include the following headings:
Share your guide with me (jpolitz@eng.ucsd.edu) and our TA (rdani@eng.ucsd.edu).
This practicum asks you to revisit the presentation you prepared before (in the Micro video) and continue to practice the same core skills. We’ll throw in a more interactive component and ask you to present live and handle actual questions from students as they arise.
Prepare a 5-minute discussion section for our in-class practicum. Keep the same topic of your video from last week, and make sure to refine your presentation based on the observations you made when watching the video. Now that you’ll be presenting “live”, in the middle of your explanation, you should expect questions from the “audience” that will force you to take your explanation in a slightly different direction. This week we want you to continue to focus on good whiteboard practices, while also structuring your presentation to work towards a learning outcome (see the resources for week 3) you have for your “students”: what do you want them to be able to do after participating in this discussion?
To make sure there is time for discussion and feedback, only half the students in each group will present in each of the two weeks dedicated to this practicum assignment. THe first three students listed in each group in this Piazza post will present in week 3, while the last three will present in week 4. If you are not presenting, it is your job to make the experience as authentic for the “TA” as possible: role-play as though you were a student attending discussion section, ask questions when appropriate, and participate.
After each TA presents their micro-teach, there will be time for reflection.
As a TA, you can serve as a role model and mentor for your students. They may ask for your advice about their career, beyond the specific class you are TAing. It’s useful to think ahead to how you’d respond to some common questions.
This week, you’ll present a short reply to one of the following prompts:
How does the material in this class (choose the class you are currently TAing) relate to what I’ll do in my career after UCSD? Note that because of the 1 minute time limit, you’ll need to pick a very specific example to speak about!
How did you know you wanted to be a Computer Scientist / software engineer?
What’s your favorite fact in about Computer Science? What’s a favorite technological innovation?
How do you choose between graduate school and industry after graduation?
Your goal is to say something meaningful, correct, interesting, and useful within the allotted time frame: one minute.
If you choose, you may use the white board during your presentation. Make sure to rehearse and give yourself lots of time to prepare and polish your oral presentation as well; 60 seconds go by very quickly if you don’t plan them carefully.
In the practicum session this week, each of your group members will present their “elevator pitch”. If you have more time, try improvising answers to some of the other questions. What are the characteristics of effective answers?