Hello, Physics 131 TAs!

Some of you had expressed interest in the TA Responsibilities list that I showed you on Friday.  I have included it below (along with the easy, all-purpose starting questions for interacting with students).

As I said on Friday, the exact grading load will change (both in time spent and in composition) each week, but should average out to 10 hours per week over the course of the semester.  If you find your duties outside student contact and training are taking you far more than 10 hours/week, please come see me and we will find a way to streamline your process.

TA Obligations (assuming 2-section load, 20 hrs/week)

Student contact: (8 hrs/week)

- Recitation, 2 hrs

- Lab, 4 hrs

- Course Center, 2 hrs

Friday Training, (~2hrs/week)

Grading and Other Duties: (should only average out to 10 hrs/week, incl. rubric preparation)

Attend 1 lecture/week, about 1-1.5 hours/week.

Solve HWs/Quizzes/Exams & Prepare/discuss rubrics for grading, about 1-2 hours/week.  Please solve through the HW before going to Course Center (read more about TAing in the Course Center at: http://umdperg.pbworks.com/w/page/10511168/121-122%20Giving%20Help).  Though only Hilary will grade the quizzes, you may want to look over them as students may ask questions about quizzes in Course Center.  If you would like to compare answers on HW/Quiz/Exam questions, get advice on a problem rubric, or learn more about creating and using rubrics for grading, please let me know.  I am happy to work with you. :-)

Grade Weekly HW (to be completed w/in 5 days; faster, if possible), roughly 4-5 hours, depending.  You will have about 1 problem per week, sometimes fewer (not every week).

Grade Bi-weekly Lab report (to be completed w/in 2 weeks; faster, if possible) (6 reports/section, 1.5 hrs per section to grade), 3 hours every two weeks, so about 1.5 hours/week.

Grade Exams/Final (to be completed w/in 3 days)--4-5 hrs/problem for all 240 students, 3 exams in semester, works out to about 1-2 hr/week (though this obviously comes in chunks of time, not regular weekly amounts).

[How to split grading....

For HWs, one problem (same for both Redish & Losert) per TA, will likely take 4-5 hours to grade all 240 papers (on average), roughly one per week--though could be slightly less....]

(N.B.: Hilary, you do not cover one of your recitation/lab sections, so you gain 3 hours here and another 1.5 hrs from the lab grading duty for that section.  This should result in quiz grading and data entry taking you about 2-3 hours per lecture (so 4-6 hour total).  Some weeks will be very fast and some will be a little slower, depending on the quiz format for that week.)

Good 4 question strategy: (GAMA)

1)  What are you attempting to do? (Goal?)

2) What have you tried/are you trying? (Action?)

3) How will what you have tried/are trying help you reach your goal? (Match?)

4) What else could you try? (Alternatives?)

I hope this helps!