CDS 101/110a, Fall 2007 - TA assignments

WARNING: This page is for a previous year. See current course homepage to find most recent page available.

CDS 101/110a

Schedule

Recitations

FAQ

AM08 (errata)

This page contains information about TA activities for CDS 101/110a, Fall 2007. Unlike prior years, I am going to try not having a head TA, but instead distributing those responsibilities to different TAs.

Assignments

Course responsibilities

• Mailing list administration (Richard and Elisa Franco) - approve valid postings to the TA and class mailing lists. Manage subscriptions to the list and fix any problems.
• Recording lectures (Sawyer Fuller) - record each lecture that Richard gives and place it online after the lecture.
• Mud cards (Julia Braman) - collect mud cards at the end of the lecture and distribute to the other TAs to be answered that evening.
• MATLAB review (Luis Soto) - present the MATLAB review in the first week of class and generally respond to questions from the students regarding MATLAB. Place MATLAB examples on the wiki as needed.
• SIMULINK review (George Hines) - present the SIMULINK review in the first week of class and generally respond to questions from the students regarding SIMULINK. Place SIMULINK examples on the wiki as needed.

Weekly TA assignments

Each week a different TA will be responsible for helping with the homework problems (and solutions). The work to be done includes:

• Prior week: look through the homework problems and solutions, flagging any issues to Richard; look through the wiki pages for the lecture and make sure all links work
• Assigned week: take the lead on answering questions related to the homework. Lead a discussion at the TA meeting on any issues that may come up in the recitation sections related to the homework
• Following week: decide how to divide up the grading between the TAs; tally all of the homework scores (and times) in the grading spreadsheet. The TA for the current week should not grade in that week (so for HW 1, George would not grade; for HW 2, Elisa would not grade, etc).

Week 1 - Luis Soto Week 2 - George Hines Week 3 - Elisa Franco Week 4 - Julia Braman Week 5 (midterm review) - Sawyer Fuller

Week 6 - Luis Soto Week 7 - George Hines Week 8 - Elisa Franco Week 9 - Sawyer Fuller Week 10: (final review) - Julia Bramn

Office hours

• Sun 4-5 pm
• Tue 3-4 pm?

Organizational Meeting

Goals

• Review the structure and features of CDS 101/110a
• Decide on assignments of tasks for the term

Agenda

CDS 101 vs CDS 110a

• Two courses taught through shared lectures
• CDS 101: principles and tools; aimed at non-specialists
• CDS 110: principles, tools and derivations: aimed at engineering audience
• Monday lecture: overview of material for the week; shared
• Wednesday lecture: CDS 110 only; more detailed analysis, proofs, etc
• Friday recitation (new this year): work through one of the problems on the homework

Course Demographics

• Typically have 70-80 students per year (up 100% from a decade ago)
• Students come from a wide variety of backgrounds (ME, Ae, EE, BE, CS, APh, ...)
• Most students are in CDS 110; 2-8 students in CDS 101
• Recitation sections may be used to cater to different audiences

Teaching Techniques

• Course wiki
• Mud cards
• MP3 files for lectures
• Hours reported on homework
• Background, midterm and final surveys

Recitation Sections

• All recitations will be on Fridays, 2-3 pm
• Recitations will work through one problem from homework set on the board/computer
• Can we tune the recitations to be useful for students with a different background?

HOWTOs

This section contains information for the TAs on how to perform various tasks in the class.