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SoE TA experiences
Twenty-One Teaching Tips for
MIT Engineering Teaching Assistants
July, 2007
By MIT School of Engineering Grad Students
and SoE Staff
Stephen Hou, G - David Cheng Ping Wang, G
Aaron Schmidt, G -
Rory Monaghan, G
Laura Zagar, G - Colin Asche, G
Ardavan Farjadpour, G - Jenny Hu, G
Dr. Barbara Masi, MIT SoE
Eight School of Engineering Teaching Assistants have distilled their years
of experience and wisdom into 21 recommendations for Teaching Assistants!
Ideas from previous TA for a class
- Find out who the TA was for the class you were assigned to TA. Ask him/ her to meet with you, share notes, ideas, and other important information that will help you as TA for this class.
In the classroom
- Be organized and prepared for recitation section. Attend class lectures; rather than just summarizing the lectures for recitation, note topics that you think students are most likely not to understand. Ask students to come to recitation each week with at least 1 question that they would like answered in recitation.
- Show enthusiasm for your subject. The most important quality in a teacher, other than organization and preparation, is bringing real excitement and interest about the subject and about learning.
- Be approachable and comfortable with students. Make a joke or two. Be present a few minutes before and after class for informal chats.
- Write clearly and in large letters on blackboards. Prepare overhead slides, and obtain a projector, if you cannot write clearly on a blackboard.
- Bring a physical object (samples from a lab, for example) that highlight concepts you’re presenting in recitation. This helped to provide visual example and focus discussion.
- Ask students to fill out “how am I doing” feedback form each week of recitation. This can help to keep abreast of how your teaching is impacting students, as well as keep on top of subject topic or grading concerns of students. Always respond to student comments.
- Keep students actively involved in your classroom. For example, ask students to go to board to work out problems. Don’t force students to do any activity if they don’t want to.
- Work out problem sets before it is handed out to students, if possible. In this way, you’re ready for questions that will arise.
- Some students don’t like to ask questions in class, but prefer one on one. If students have no more questions, and you’ve covered all of the material you planned to cover in recitation, sometimes it’s good to end recitation 10 minutes early and stay for those 10 minutes for students to ask questions one on one.
- Get to know students’ academic background at the beginning of the term. Find out how strong they are in assumed prerequisite subjects or topics for a class. When students don’t understand a topic due to poor background preparation, be prepared to provide mini refresher lectures on these topics.
- For students with poor academic preparation for a class, refer the student to tutoring services available through the Dean for Undergraduate Education office.
Office hours
- Limit students to scheduled office hours. Be there when hours are scheduled.
TA responsibilities and workload
- Talk with the faculty instructor before the term begins. Discuss what responsibilities you will have as TA, whether you will be a grader, run review sessions, recitations, tutorials, labs, and/or office hours, prepare or grade problem sets and/or exams. Talk with the instructor frankly about your academic preparation for the position so that the faculty member does not assume knowledge you may not have. Talk about how many hours will be expected each week for you to fulfill you TA responsibilities. Let the faculty member know of your other academic commitments for classes and research so that he/she is aware of them, and can help you schedule your TA workload accordingly.
- Most TAs work for 20-25 hours per week. Let faculty instructor know when workload becomes too high. Working together to find a way to lessen the load is better than becoming overwhelmed and/or missing other academic commitments.
Multicultural classroom
- Sometimes foreign graduate students are uncomfortable in a U.S. classroom where students are comfortable interacting with the instructor and asking questions during class. Make sure all students understand that it’s acceptable to have a more informal classroom setting in which questions are welcome.
Problem set or exam solutions
- If you’re asked to work out problem set solutions or exam solutions for a class, think about how to create problem solutions that show clear step by step solutions. In this way, novice students will understand exactly how a problem is solved.
- Even when an instructor hands out problem set solutions, sometimes it is very useful for students for you to take the time to write up detailed step by step solutions to problems. Sometimes faculty instructors skip steps and assume students can figure out which steps were assumed. Students often don’t, in fact, understand.
Cheating
- Set clear expectations on cheating on problem sets and exams with students.
- If there is a cheating situation on a problem set or exam, bring it to the attention of the faculty instructor.
Stressed students
- Get to know your students with short informal chats at beginning of recitation or, if time, at office hours. If a student is very stressed, and worried, let the student know that there are personnel in the Medical Department or through the Dean for Undergraduate Education office who can assist them. Let the faculty instructor know if a student is very stressed.
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