Instructions for Teaching Assistants

This is a non-cookbook lab.  We do not tell the students explicitly what to do either in the the lab manual or in the lab itself.  We discuss things with them.   We do 4 experiments, 2 weeks per experiment. There is only a very short description of what is to be measured. I go over the experiments in class. Lecture notes are available on the web. Students are encouraged to design the experiment and innovate. 

If the TAs do not attend the lectures, many problems can occur.  They can give explicit instructions on what to do in the lab.  They can give instructions counter to what I have asked.  They can be less informed about the experiments than are the students.  Some of you have taught this class before but not with me as the lecturer.  It is important that one of the TAs for each lab section attend lecture.  I also need assistance with some in-lecture labs.


TAs are more important in this version of 2BL. Your duties are the following:

  • Attend the lectures so we are all asking for the same thing.  Answer questions when the students can't.  Make suggestions.
  • Help students understand labs. VERY short talk.
  • Check proposal at beginning of lab.
  • Mark notebooks at end to show in lab work.
  • Check off short homework on a scale of 0-2 in lab.
  • Help students performing the experiment.  Discuss measurements and presentation.  Explain things.
  • Grade write-up, proposal, and lab notebook on a scale of 0-30 with RMS of 5.
  • Maintain a weekly record of the lab performance grade.
  • Record grades on the PC outside my office promptly.

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    The lab write-up/proposal/notebook grade is most of the grade for the course. Do a good job of grading the reports. Show the students what was wrong with their experiment and report by your markings. Give some reasonable spread (RMS of 5). To make grades uniform, each experiment will be graded by just one (or if necessary 2) TA. Here is the distribution of points for a total of 30 points possible.

  • proposal (should contain initial error analysis) 6
  • experimental method, data collection, and recording 5
  • brief summary of experiment performed 3
  • presentation of data 2
  • analysis (calculations) 6
  • presentation of results and error estimates 5
  • conclusions 3

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    Remember, regurgitation of information and useless verbiage is frowned upon.  We should be grading on their measurement and analysis, not the time put into the report.
    They can do things different ways.  There is no requirement for how many repetitions of a measurement are needed.  It would be good if they thought about that question even if they came up with a different answer than I would have.  If there is an calculation of how to do something, its worth more than doing the right thing as told to them by the TA.