CDS 101/110a/210, Fall 2008 - TA Information

This page contains information about TA activities for CDS 101/110a, Fall 2008.

Assignments

Course responsibilities

Mailing list administration - approve valid postings to the TA and class mailing lists. Manage subscriptions to the list and fix any problems. Admin pages for the lists: cds101-students, cds101-tas
Recording lectures - record each lecture that Richard gives and place it online after the lecture.
Mud cards - collect mud cards at the end of the lecture and distribute to the other TAs to be answered that evening. Look through the answers to the mud cards as they come up to make sure they are in a consistent style.
MATLAB/SIMULINK review - present the MATLAB/SIMULINK 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.

Recitations

Starting in the third week of the class, we'll have recitations on Fridays from 2-3 pm. Each TA will lead a recitation section, with the sections having slightly different "flavors" (see the recitation schedule for information and assignments). Each recitation section should cover roughly the following things (not necessarily in this order):

Answer any questions the students have about the lecture or the homework
Discuss topics that you thought were not well covered in lecture or the text book, or that are special to your section (eg, the information systems session might get some information about discrete time systems, etc)
Go through one of the problems on the homework for the week. This should be done on the board and/or computer (depending on the type of problem). It doesn't need to be in full detail and it can go a bit fast, but provide enough information that the students see how the problem is worked from start to finish, and what is expected in their answers on the homework. We'll decide on the problem to cover in the TA meeting prior to the recitation.

Office hours

We'll have two hours of office hours each week. The tentative times are

Sun 4-5 pm
Tue 3-4 pm?

We'll initially assign 1 TA to each office hour (the assigned TA for the week plus one other) but we can change that if the office hours get busy.

Weekly meetings

Standing Agenda

Last week

This week

Recitation -
Homework grading assigments -
MUD card/frequently questions -
Office hours -

Next week

Plan for the week

HOWTOs

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

Creating FAQ pages

To create a FAQ page, you need to do the following steps:

Search the previous FAQ pages to see if this question has already been asked. If so, update the answer and skip to step 5
Type in the question to be answered in the search box on the left side of the wiki.
Click on the phrase "this exact title" when the search page comes up. This will create the FAQ page.
Enter the answer to the question. You don't need to repeat the question (it is already included in the title for the page).
At the end of the answer, use the text '--~~~~' to add your signature to the page. If you are modifying the answer on an existing page, add your signature below the existing signature. When you save the page, this information will get converted into your username and date (you can edit it again if you don't like the format).
At the bottom of the page, add the category information (used to list the FAQs in the right places):
```
[[Category: CDS 101/110 FAQ - Lecture w-m]]
[[Category: CDS 101/110 FAQ - Lecture w-m, Fall 2007]]
```
where 'w' is the current week and 'm' is the lecture number (1 = Monday, 2 = Wednesday, 3 = Friday). For homework sets, replace 'Lecture w-m' with 'Homework n'.
Save the page
Go back to the FAQ page and append the following text to the URL link in your browser window: ?action=purge (i.e. http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~murray/wiki/CDS_101/110a%2C_Fall_2007_-_FAQ?action=purge) and press enter. This will purge the cached pages and you should see your mud card response appear on the FAQ page. If you don't do this, you won't be able to see your modification.

Notes on creating FAQ pages

The title doesn't have to be exactly what was written in the MUD card, but should be close enough that the student will recognize their question. You should reword the question to be simply stated and descriptive of the contents of the FAQ.
When you are writing up the answer for a FAQ, remember that this is the first course the students are taking in feedback and control. Avoid the use of advanced concepts that the students haven't seen yet and try to explain things in a way that gives insight to someone who may be struggling to understand the concept.
Including pictures to illustrate your answers is a great approach if appropriate. OK to grab pictures off of the web, but make sure to list where they came from (and include a link if you can).
You should also look in the course text to see if there is information there that might be relevant (students are asking questions in class, so may not have read the book yet). Include the relevant section number where more information can be found, but go ahead and provide additional explanation as well.

Using the CVS server

We won't be using the CVS server this year.

Course Statistics

We'll probably have 15-20 first year graduate students (based on past years), so a total class size of about 65 students.

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?