Submitting Grades

TA Policies

• Joyce Poon and the "TA coordinator" elected by CSGSA (see http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/csgsa/representatives.html#Other) will select the TAs for you. If you want TAs with particular backgrounds (e.g., TAs who have done well in specific courses, as evidenced by their transcripts), or if you don't think that your currently assigned TAs are well suited to your needs, then contact Joyce or the TA coordinator as soon as possible!
• It helps to have a brief meeting with your TAs before the course starts, to get an idea of their strengths (or lack of them!) with respect to your course. Consider the following aspects of your course, when determining how well-suited a potential TA is:

• It is recommended that you put each TA's responsibilities in writing, to avoid misunderstandings.
• Hourly TAs may have a minimum and maximum number of hours that they would like to contribute to the course. Abide by their expectations. Monthly TAs, however, should spend an average of 12 hours per week on the course. Note that this includes preparation time.
• At the end of a term, but especially in December, many TAs like to leave for home as soon as possible to maximize their holiday time, or to take advantage of cheaper airfares. Warn your monthly TAs that they need to remain at UBC until a few days after the final exam, since they'll be needed to hold pre-exam consulting hours, and to invigilate and mark the final exam. Remember, the monthly TAs are being paid for the month in which the final exam period falls! Avoid the temptation of letting TAs substitute "a bit more marking on the last assignment" in exchange for leaving early (i.e., not invigilating or marking the final exam). In the past, this has been a no-win situation for instructors who are probably busy enough as it is. Also, avoid letting a friend of the TA substitute for him/her while invigilating the final exam.
• Avoid penalizing good monthly TAs; try not to give them more work to do than your other monthly TAs. (Hourly TAs get paid by the hour, so they'll be paid for the amount of work that they actually do.)
• Mention to your TAs that they will be evaluated at various stages in the course by the students and the instructor. Hopefully, this will promote greater TA responsibility.

Encouraging Thinking

Encouraging Reflection

Examinable Material

• Since there's often far more material in a course than can be reasonably covered in a final exam, consider putting some questions (that you don't intend to ask) in a "sample" final exam (with is released, with or without solutions). This will encourage students to learn that material.
• Consider asking one or more midterm question that can easily be answered from the assigned textbook readings. This might encourage them to actually read the textbook during the rest of the term.

Workload

• It is true that the amount of coverage for a typical computer science course today is far greater today than it was 10-20 years ago, but recall that students today have Google, online course materials like lecture slides and tutorials, far better textbooks (usually), etc. Still, be careful not to overload the students. As a rule of thumb, the amount of homework should be about 2-3 hours per lecture hour. The University of Washington, for example, suggests 3 hours of homework per credit, per week.
• Before adding new material to a course, think about what existing material should come out in order to make room for the material that you plan to add!
• For many students, especially first-year students, a computer science course takes up more time than any of their other courses. Even good students have complained about the workload in computer science (in particular, the programming assignments). While it is true that learning to program well takes practice, instructors should consider narrowing down the scope of a programming assignment to avoid busy work (i.e., work that is repetitive and doesn't really enhance the learning process).
  • Think about goal-learning outcomes.
  • Note that diminishing returns occur from larger programming assignments.
  • Consider asking your students:
    • What did you get out of this programming exercise?
    • How many hours did you spend on it?
  • Consider attaching time limits to an assignment: "If you don't get this working within x hours, then come and ask for help." Perhaps a student is needlessly struggling, is misunderstanding something, or is not aware of certain resources for the course.

Course Policies

• You should strive for fairness and consistency when establishing course policies. Remember, if you do a favour for one student, others may be feel slighted at not being given the same treatment.
• On your course outline, list your expectations for:
  • attendance
  • late assignments
  • missed midterms
  • missed final exams
• Avoid giving in to special requests for early exams (e.g., student wants to qualify for cheaper airfare).
• If a student is sick for the final exam, you should have the student write the final exam the next time the course is offered, or during the August exam period. Avoid having the student write the exam shortly after the others write (e.g., 0-3 days), as this usually gives a distinct advantage to this student (he/she has more time to study, and word gets around pretty quickly about the questions on the final exam). In fairness to all students, advertise your policy before the exam, so that students who are not legitimately sick will think twice about missing your exam. Consider changing some of the questions on the exam before giving it again.
• Avoid re-using exam questions for which the integrity may have been compromised. For example, word gets around quickly about the kinds of questions that were asked on the exam. In fact, students may already be discussing the solutions to some of the questions, on the newsgroup or bulletin board. Replace such questions on future exams. As for other questions, if you've numbered the exams (e.g., serial numbers), it should be easy to see whether or not you got all of the exams back, including the leftover ones. Be sure to collect the marking schemes from the TAs, and don't leave the marked exams or solutions lying around in open spaces in your office. These latter few points will allow you to re-use some of your questions, especially those questions which can be modified in some way (e.g., with different parameters or constants), to yield a different answer.

What is a Grade?

• Are you measuring performance at various milestones during the term, or are you only concerned with students having a mastery of the material at the end of the course? The answer to such questions will determine whether or not you permit a final exam to count for 100% of a student's grade. Generally speaking, most instructors provide well-defined weights for the assignments, labs, quizzes, midterms, and final exam; and abide by the formula established at the start of the term.
• Watch out for students who are trying to "negotiate" the course marking scheme with you. Some students will want you to place a greater weight on their final exam (e.g., ignoring their bad midterm). Some students will want you to place a greater weight on their assignments. Some students may approach you near the end of the term, and mention to you that they weren't really feeling all that well when they wrote the midterm, and are hoping that you'll replace their midterm mark with their final exam mark (if the final exam mark is higher). You should provide a consistent grading scheme that is fair to all students, without favouring certain types of students.