Syllabus
What is the workload for CSE 599?
CSE 599 is a 2-unit course: expect to spend up to 6 hours per week on this course, including the 80 minute weekly session. The additional three-and-a-half or so hours per week will be spent evaluating and refining your TA activities, preparing for CSE 599 practicum sessions, and consulting background research papers, information guides, and videos. Specifically:
- Surveys and reflections
- You must complete the CSE 599
pre-class and post-class survey. At the beginning of the quarter, you will define your TA role and responsibilities (using the ASES form). Each week, you'll fill out a short form to track how you carry out these duties and to reflect on successes
and on areas for improvement.
- Engaged attendance
- You are expected to fully participate in all of every synchronous Zoom based Wednesday session and practicum meeting, including arriving
on time (or early), engaging in group activities, and participating in large- and small-group discussions. On (rare) occasions when
unavoidable circumstances require you to miss a class session, you are expected to notify your practicum teammates, the CSE 599 TA,
and the instructor ahead of time, and to make up the missed work.
- Teaching practice
- You will practice effective teaching and reflect on your growth over the quarter. At least once during the quarter, you will introduce the weekly CSE 599 theme based on provided background resources.
In the CSE 599 practicum and in your own TA work (e.g in discussion), you'll continue to apply and grow your skills, while also
observing others. At the end of the quarter, you will reflect on your teaching methods and perspectives.
Around Week 6 of the quarter, we will have a checkpoint to confirm that you are on track for successfully completing the course requirements. Students who do not pass this checkpoint may not be offered TA appointments for the next quarter.
With the successful completion of this class, you will be able to:
- Effectively carry out the basic roles and responsibilities of CSE TAs at UC San Diego.
More specifically ...
- Communicate with your instructor to align expectations about the specific roles and responsibilities of your TA position in a given quarter.
- Effectively plan and deliver discussion sections with clear learning objectives and implementing active learning strategies.
- Create and use rubrics to support efficient and replicable grading.
- Maintain and safeguard protected student data.
- Connect professionalism to teamwork and teaching and reflect on your development as a professional.
More specifically ...
- Reflect on your and your teammates' collaborations to assess what's working well, what can be improved, and how to improve it.
- Identify priority areas for attention and improvement, and identify where efficiency can help decrease time spent on non-priority areas.
- Connect skills and insights from your role as a TA to future career goals.
- Describe several theories of how people learn and apply them to teaching and learning strategies.
More specifically ...
- Design specific, low-stakes activities to find out what students do and don't know.
- Use techniques for creating inclusive communities for learning.
Grading
This class is taken S/U. We hope that every student will successfully earn a passing grade in this class. To do so,
you need to meet or exceed the following minimum passing thresholds in each course component.
- Surveys and forms
- All required surveys and forms must be completed by Wednesday of finals week.
- Attendance
- Any missed class session (large group and/or practicum) is communicated to the CSE 599 instructor and TA in writing
and a plan to make up the missed work is proposed and carried out. Activities and handouts for each week's discussion and practicum are available
here.
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- Regular TA reflections
- The reflections (via Gradescope) must start by week 2 and there can be no more than a three-week gap between reflections. For example, reflections on your week 1, week 4, week 7, and week 10 activities would meet the minimum passing threshold.
- Assignments
- You must complete the Observation Reflection assignment by Wednesday of finals week.
- Group presentations
- You sign up for and present the CSE 599 weekly theme once during the quarter.