CSE 599 Teaching Methods in Computer Science
Fall 2008

Facilitators:

• Beth Simon (CSE TA Advisor), CSE4104
• Liz Bales (Arrowsmith) (CSE Senior TA)

This class serves several purposes. First, it is required for all UCSD CSE graduate students (you should take it either before or concurrent with your first TA assignment).

More importantly, this class serves as a source of education into the practice and theory of educating others in learning computer science -- something at the core of academic practice. We strive to prepare you to engage the best practices in educating not only undergraduate students here at UCSD, but also to help you develop successful practices in managing advisees and in teaching or managing others in your future career. Additionally, many of the techniques and practices we'll identify as valuable for teaching are also valuable in any situation where you need to convey technical material to an audience effectively -- hint: in technical paper presentations.

Details:

If you are enrolled in this class for credit, then attendance is mandatory. If you expect to miss a class, please contact the instructor as soon as possible with your conflict so that we can work out an alternate activity. Additionally, enrolled students are expected to perform the outside preparation as detailed in each class period.

Class meets Wednesdays 3-4pm in CSE 1202.

Get slides at http://up.ucsd.edu. Create a login (of your choice). Enroll in the class. Password to enroll is cse599 (lowercase).

Date	Topic of Discussion
Oct 7	Introduction, Why this class?, Identification of interests, Basic TA responsibilities and guidelines. The TA Evaluation Form Homework: Prepare for mini-discussion section practice next week.
October 14	Discussion section Hands-on Practice Sesstion: Prepare a 3 minute "discussion section" on one of these topics: How to parallel park a car. The difference between stacks and queues. How to find and fix and infinite loop. It's not "real" until you try it... Complete a survey so we can tailor the class to your needs.
October 22	Review of Discussion Section Experience. A compendium of best practices from CSE TAs and your experience. The presentation handout from CTD.
October 29	TA Responsibilities (TA Union Contract) and Assessment and grading: Overview of theory, rubrics, practical issues in CS BEFORE CLASS: Please read one of these papers. (You might want to read the abstract of both). Read whichever one is most interesting to you. Value of feedback in student learning (Context: Biology, University of Washington). Developing a new exam question for programming assessment (Context: Computing CS1 course, University of Auckland). The code to grade out of 11 points before next class (enter data on surveymonkey by noon of Week 6).
November 5	Grading and Assessment Part 2: Rubrics, Exam question research, value of regular feedback in classroom, clickers. The Tomorrow's Professor listserv. Highly recommended reading for grads and faculty. Check out the "Graduate Students and Postdocs" section.
November 12	BEFORE CLASS: read how people learn. Also be sure to read one of the following papers: Expert Tutors How Novices Differ from Experts (Ericsson) Preconceptions of Computer Science Students (Commonsense Computing) Impact of Feedback Collaborative Web System (PeerWise) Student-Centered Learning Environments (Ubiquitous Presenter)
November 19	Course Evals Overview of Ubiquitous Presenter system Discussion groups on Reading for Nov 12. Answer collected questions submitted before class.
December 3	Discussion section observation review Undergraduate panel (submit questions for panel on surveymonkey)

Resources:

• The center for teaching development (CTD) has a number of workshops designed to help graduate students become effective TAs. See the calendar for details.
• Make your own survey from the CTD. A great resource for mid-course surveys. Remember, if you survey your students, you should report back to them on at least some of the results. They took the time to answer, you should take the time to review some of the answers. Also, you MUST be prepared to make at least one change that they recommended. If you aren't open to making a change, don't ask them their opinion.