The main time commitment of this course is being a TA. Three hours per week of your TAship this semester is unpaid and counts as the principle assignment of this course. If you are enrolled for two or more credits of 2910, you need to work (credits × 3) hours per week unpaid for this course. There will also be some meetings and other activities, as outlined below.
Some sessions will be mandatory (topics like ethics and diversity) and others optional (topics like learning theories and TPEGS). You will be required to attend all required sessions and a subset of the optional sessions. Attending additional instances of the same session does not count toward your minimum optional session count.
To vote on which optional sessions we should offer, use this form
We have four meetings each week; you need to attend only one of them, and may switch which one week-to-week if you wish.
| Day | Time | Place |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday | 9:50–10:35 am | Rice 536 |
| Thursday | 10:00–10:45 am | Rice 536 |
| Thursday | 5:00–5:45 pm | Thornton A120 |
| Friday | 1:00–1:45 pm | Rice 242 |
Class on Wed 2018-03-21 was canceled due to snow.
- Feb 7–9
Welcome, and ethics of TAing. This session is required.
Please read the advice from previous TAs on professionalism, amount of work (including “when there are too many students”), TAing your friends, and ask questions before this week’s 2910 meeting.
My lecture notes outline is available.
- Feb 14–16
Teaching, tutoring, mentoring, and learning. This session is required.
Please skim the advice from previous TAs on preparation, failed explanations, listening, and answering questions before this week’s 2910 meeting.
My lecture notes outline is available.
No class Feb 21–23, as Prof Tychonievich will be at SIGCSE.
- Feb 28–Mar 2
Diversity: stereotype threat. This session is required.
My lecture notes outline is available.
Spring Break
- Mar 14–16
Problem Students. This session is required.
My lecture notes outline is available.
- Mar 21–23
Grading. This session is required.
Part 1: the theory of grading, its objectives, challenges, and alternatives.
Part 2: the practice of grading, making difficult calls, fairness, and appeals.
- Mar 28–30
Diversity: implicit bias. This session is required.
My lecture notes outline is available.
- Apr 4–6
So you want to be a teacher…. This session is optional.
Observations about teaching CS in public and private gradeschools and highschools: how to get in, what the job is like, etc. Upon request, information about being faculty at 2- and 4-year colleges and as research- or teaching-focussed university faculty may be added.
- Apr 11–13
Cheating and evaluation. This session is optional.
Discussion of how we evaluate knowledge and how different models encourage or discourage cheating. Spoiler: if we knew how to stop cheating we would have already… but we have tried a lot of things, which we will discuss, along with brainstorming future options to reduce cheating.
- Apr 18–20
Course design: Engagement. This session is optional.
Discussions of gamification and other techniques to changing engagement in a course. We’ll discuss various parts of this: the various incarnations of the gamified Game Design course here at UVA; why people like games and what parts of those can and can’t make it into courses; and a little about how this applies to non-course interactions as well.
- Apr 25–27
Structuring a lecture. This session is optional.
Tips and ideas for organizing thoughts into a classroom presentation. A hands-on activity with instruction and guidance, ending up with a draft lecture plan.
- Not scheduled
TA Panels. This session is optional.
Experienced TAs will sit on a Q&A Panel.
Panelists TBA
Come with questions!
- Not Scheduled
Professor’s teaching philosophy. This session is optional.
In which various faculty present whatever they wish about their approach to teaching. Specific faculty TBA
(note: the Prof Teaching Philosophy was highly voted for, but I was unable to get Profs for 3 of the 4 sessions so it was canceled)
- Not scheduled
CS education research: an overview. This session is optional.
What is CS education research, what does it tell us, and how could you do it? This session will be a survey of the field, with a focus on its challenges, open questions, limitations, and recent findings.
- Not scheduled
Course (re)Design. This session is optional.
A discussion of course design principles and a brief experiencing (re)designing a single course. We’ll discuss pacing, organization, topic selection (and exclusion), assignment design, and scheduling, with a brief hands-on workshop (re)designing a CS course.
- Not scheduled
Curriculum Blue-Sky. This session is optional.
A brainstorming group on how to redesign the entire CS curriculum. We’ll review the current curriculum and pending changes to it, some of its many constraints, some of the curriculum committee’s future plans on how to improve it, and brainstorm other curriculum ideas.
- Not scheduled
Spatial Reasoning. This session is optional.
A deeper diver into spatial reasoning, how it is developed, why it matters, and how it can be developed and bypassed