Teaching Assistant Handbook: BioCore

Contact the BioCore Coordinator: Waheeda Khalfan (wkhalfan [at] stanford [dot] edu).

The names of the courses should give you a hint:

In general, Cell & Molecular and Integrative/Organismal track students take on Bio 41 or 42. Eco-Evo students usually TA Bio 43, but those with a strong genetics background sometimes TA 41. For more specific information on the topics covered, take a look at the class schedules from 2009. (Topics and dates might change a bit from year to year.)

Before classes start:

The first week of classes:

As the quarter progresses:

The goal of section is to help the students understand the material from the previous week's lectures. Some students attending section may have questions or be confused about some of the material. Others are looking to you to help them organize their thoughts about the concepts they've been learning. Which information is the most important? How are the various facts and ideas connected?

Each one-hour section meeting corresponds to about four hours of lecture. You will not be able to review all the material. When you prepare for section, consider: what are the most essential things for the students to know? Which ideas are the most central to an understanding of the topic? Ask the professors which aspects of the topic they'd like you to emphasize. Also consider which topics are the most difficult.

Remember that the students may have trouble with things you think are easy, or vice versa, so it's a good idea to get their feedback. Make sure students have a chance to ask questions and discuss potentially confusing topics, and be prepared to respond to their concerns. Be careful, though-you may encounter a student who expresses major confusion about a minor detail, or a student who has trouble with something everyone else in section finds obvious. Instead of spending precious section time responding to these students, you can ask them to come to your office hours.

Beyond those broad concerns, you will have to decide for yourself how to structure your section. You can spend time explaining the confusing parts of lecture, using a different approach or different examples for illustration. You can work through problem sets and old exam questions. You can take questions, or direct discussion among the students. You can outline the week's material and draw connections between the different topics. You will probably want to use some combination of these techniques that suits the subject matter, your personality, and the students. You may have to try a few and see which ones work best.

No matter how you decide to organize your section, plan carefully. Estimate how long it will take to go through the material you plan to review, draw diagrams on the board, etc. You may want to rehearse the material beforehand. Beware that taking questions from the students might take more or less time than you've estimated. If you can, be flexible: have some topics or activities in mind to cut out or add, as time permits. If you are uncomfortable being flexible, you will have to be firm about sticking to your schedule. Either way, keep an eye on the clock during class.

The classroom dynamic depends on a lot of things-you, the combination of students, the time of day and week, etc. If it's 8:00 a.m., your students will be sleepy even if you spend the hour tap dancing and singing show tunes, so don't take an unresponsive class too personally. On the other hand, there are ways to get all but the most morose students to participate.

If you would like your students to be more involved in class, think about what you do to invite questions. Do you simply ask, "Any questions?" Some students may have about 30 questions, and can't decide quickly which question is the most important one to ask. Try fishing for questions on a specific topic. "Does anyone have questions about mitosis?" or "Does anyone need me to explain more about the difference between mitosis and meiosis?" Solicit questions on the topics you think are the most important or most difficult.

Make sure the students have enough time to respond. This is a very important point. You might feel uncomfortable standing up there in silence with everyone looking at you-but think about it from the students' perspective. They might need to take a few seconds to formulate their thoughts. Some of them might be waiting to see if someone else will speak first. Look around at them. Do some of them look like they might have something to say, but are hesitating? Give them 5 or 10 seconds to get their words out. (But don't wait so long that they all start daydreaming.)

Are you trying to engage students by getting them to answer your (or each other's) questions about the material? Maybe you are trying to get them to tell you what to write on the board as you work through problem sets. This can be a good way to keep the students actively involved in the class, but it's frustrating if they won't talk and you have to answer your own questions. Again, make sure you're giving them enough time to respond. If they're all just looking at you blankly, try giving a hint or asking a more leading question. Students might be unwilling to respond unless they're sure they know the right answer-no one wants to look dumb in front of their peers. Let them break the ice and get in the habit of participation by asking them questions they know they can answer.

It is up to you how many and what kind of extra course materials you provide for the students. You don't have to do it, but the students will be extremely appreciative if you do. (It might even help them learn something.)

On the other hand, it can be a lot of work to make up extra course materials. If you do choose to provide them with handouts, consider working with your fellow TAs to split up the work. You can also look for handouts from previous years, although you should check to make sure that the material is still current and that the emphasis is still appropriate, since the course content may change from year to year.

For BioCore-specific advice, you can talk to your fellow TAs, the BioCore advisors, or the course coordinator. For more universal advice on teaching, the CTL has lots of helpful resources. See the section called TA Resources.

Writing a good exam is harder than it looks. A good exam should allow you to distinguish between the great, good, ok, and inadequate students. This process can go wrong in many ways: the exam could be too short or too long; it could skip important topics while emphasizing minor ones; the questions could be too difficult, too easy, or simply poorly worded. If questions are not independent of one another, a student who gets one wrong might be doomed to fail the whole exam. Last but not least, a poorly written exam can be really hard to grade.

It goes without saying that it's good practice for TAs who want to be professors someday. Beyond that, remember that you have much more contact with the students than the professors do, so you have a better idea of what they'll find challenging or easy. Finally, remember that you're going to have to grade the exam, so you might as well do what you can to avoid troublesome questions. When you are writing or editing test questions, consider these factors:

• What knowledge does the question test? Is it something that the students really ought to understand, or is it just your favorite topic? Does the question require thought and/or preparation, or is it so obvious that all the students get the right answer without any effort?
• Is it clear what the question is asking for? We've all taken tests in which the wording of the question was unclear; maybe it even seemed like the professor was trying to trip us up. Try to think of all the ways the students might interpret the question. If there's any way for a reasonable student to misinterpret, try to reword it more clearly.
• For multi-part questions, can students mess up on the first part but still succeed at later parts? If not, you're probably putting too much weight on the first part of the question. Consider rewriting so that the different parts of the question aren't so interdependent.
• Will you be able to grade the question? Is there an obvious way to assign points to the different aspects of a correct answer? If an open-ended question asks for examples, how will you decide which examples are good and which are bad?

Once the test is written, you'll have to take it and time yourself. This process helps you to think through some of the issues outlined above, and it also gives a good indication of whether the test is too easy or too hard. If the TAs can't get through the test in the allotted time, it is surely too long for the students. If you breeze through in 15 minutes, it's probably too easy. If you run into confusion with someone else's poorly worded question, so will the students. These kinds of things can be adjusted in the pre-exam TA meeting.