TAing

Today was the start of the year. The first year cohort is assigned to this 3 day workshop which is aimed to assist you in developing your TA skills. Although it was super early I managed to enjoy it. I assumed that the workshop would be give by some anonymous HR person, but instead it was given by a 3-year grad student so the talks/demonstrations were relevant. Tommorrow we have to give a little lecture on some biological topic so that the class could evaluate us. I am going to give my BIO100 lecture on diffusion/osmosis. I'm sure that will amaze them......

I've learned that I will be TAing BIO100L. I have no idea what that means. Everything seems so High-tech here though. Last week I received an invitation to join Turnitin which is a web-site in which my student will need to turn in their assignments. The database is used to check for any sort of plagarism. Therefore I will ask them to turn in a written and an online copy. UCI also has something called an Electronic Educational Environment (eee), where as a student or lecturer, you have an online site where you could look at post for the classes your scheduled to attend or, in turn, you could post things for the class you are teaching. So, apparently, my first task is to try and design a web page for my class. You could also post students grades on the eee (this will not only post the students grade but it will also give the average and where the student stands in comparison to the rest of the class...apparently you can see graphs/curves). Did CSUSB know about this?

My last quarter teaching at CSUSB kind of sucked. I was teaching 3 BIO100 labs (which is a class for non-majors) and I had a lot of kids (well...students...which I'm sure where older than I was) who were disruptive...well....they were a pain. One student yelled at me because she didn't want to pay attention and learn how to properly use a microscope......others got upset because I had 22 other people in the class ....you know, and I wasn't focusing only on them. My goal here is to stop being so nice. I definately have to set boundaries from the beginning.