EECS 150 Spring 2002:
Design Techniques and Components for Digital Systems
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Lecture: TuTh 2-330P, 60 Evans |
Lab lecture: Fr 2-3P, 10 Evans |
CS150 TA Duties: Spring 2002
Thanks for agreeing to be a TA for CS150! This course has a reputation
among the students as being a lot of hard work, but very rewarding. It is
clearly one of the defining experiences for many of the students here at
Berkeley.
As a TA, your primary responsibility is to the students. You will help
them with the lab work and with the material presented in class and the
book. You will probably spend most of your time helping them in the lab.
The theoretical topics are fairly easy to understand from the lectures
and readings, however, the practical skills used in the lab are more difficult
to learn and require one-on-one assistance. Our effectiveness will be based
on personal attention.
The key to successful teaching is preparation. It is very easy to underestimate
the time and effort involved in preparing to teach a new idea. If you have
ever lectured or tutored before you will understand that it is very easy
to fool yourself into thinking that you easily understand a topic until
you try to explain it to someone else. Therefore a lot of your time will
be spent getting yourself up to speed on the course material and preparing
for lab sessions. Of course, the benefit of this for you is that you will
really get to know the material well!
We will limit the enrollment to 180 students, although early indications
show that enrollment is down this semester due to a relaxing of the L&S
requirement. We have 6 TAs. You will have primary responsibility for at
most 30 students, these will be the ones assigned to your lab session.
We would like for you to get to know your students very well. You will
be responsible for tracking their progress through the semester and giving
them personal assistance when they need it. You will be the point of first
contact for these 30 students when they have questions about course material
or procedure. If you cannot handle the question then you should pass them
on to the instructor (John Wawrzynek).
The following paragraphs provide a detailed description of duties. Refer
to the on-line weekly schedule for information on the lab and discussion
sections.
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Attend Lectures and Lab Lecture:
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So that we are all on the same page with regard to what was said in lecture
and what topics are important and should be stressed, it is important that
you attend the regular lectures. This is important, particularly this semester,
as we plan to introduce a significant amount of new material. Lectures
are held Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:00-3:30. If you cannot make
these times because of conflict, let me know. Please also attend the lab
lecture. This lecture is held each Friday at 2pm. We will share the responsibility
for presenting lab lectures. We will go over the procedure for the
following weeks lab exercise or project checkpoint.
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Hold office hours:
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You need to post times for and hold 2 office hours per week. One of these
2 hours should be held in the lab during a time when there is not a regularly
scheduled lab session. The other should be held in a private office space.
We will arrange some office space in Soda or Cory Hall. Anything goes during
office hours, but we suspect that this time will be spent answering questions
about homework assignments, lab exercises, or project checkpoints.
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Do lab exercise the week before:
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The week before each lab assignment goes out you must do the lab exercise
yourself. This preparation is critical to you being able to assist the
students the following week. It will refresh your skill with the equipment
and CAD tools and put you in a position to steer them away from obstacles.
We will reserve the lab for one or two sessions per week for TA use.
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Assist in a lab session:
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Earlier in the week, before you lead your own lab session, you will join
another lab session and assist the lead TA. This will give you a graceful
introduction to the problems students have with the lab and relive some
of the pressure on the lead TA.
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Lead a lab session:
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Meet with your students in the lab. Hold a brief discussion at the beginning
of the 3 hours session. Get students started on the exercise. Move through
the lab offering help and looking for problems. Inspect completed lab exercises
and project check-points. Check-off and record results. Tidy up the lab.
Record student results in the database.
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Prepare section discussion:
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Look over lecture material, reading assignments, weekly homework assignment
and review lab exercise in preparation to teach a discussion session. You
should try to anticipate questions based on office hour questions and from
the experience of other TAs. Prepare extra examples to reinforce
material from lecture. Think about how to stimulate discussion.
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Teach discussion section:
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The primarily goal here is to make sure everyone understands the material
presented in class. If students do not ask questions, the most effective
way to stimulate discussion is to reiterate the material presented in class
through more examples.
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Grade quizzes:
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We will be having weekly quizzes in class based on the homework assignments.
You will be responsible for grading some subset of the quizzes for your
students. This way, you can better track their understanding of the material.
Course readers will grade the remainder of the papers. You will be responsible
for recording the grades of all your students and then returning the papers
during your lab section.
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Attend staff meeting:
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We will have a meeting with all the TAs every Friday, time TBD.
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Other:
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We will share in head TA responsibilities (see below). Help in grading
midterms and final exams. Help in final project grading.
TA responsibilities Summary:
Duty |
hours |
Attend regular and lab lectures |
4 |
Hold office hours |
2 |
Do lab exercise week before |
2 |
Assist in a lab section |
3 |
Head a lab section |
3 |
Prepare section discussion |
1.5 |
Teach discussion section |
1 |
Grade quizzes |
1 |
Attend staff meeting |
1 |
Other |
1.5 |
TOTAL |
20 |
Head TA responsibility summary:
The head TA normally would maintain the class web pages, work with the
instructor to devise weekly homework and quizzes, debug the lab exercises
and do the handout, lead the TA lab sections (this is the time each week
when the TAs actually do next weeks lab exercise, or project checkpoint),
do spot checks in the lab during non section times, and fill in for the
instructor for regular and lab lectures. There will be no head
TA this semester, so these duties will be shared among the Professor and
the other TAs on a rotating basis.
J. Wawrzynek 12/27/01 (johnw@cs.berkeley.edu)
yurym@cs.berkeley.edu
"May 21 2002"