Tips for Teaching Assistants

TO:                 CHE 205 TA’s

FROM:           Lisa Bullard

RE:                 TA responsibilities with regard to academic integrity

During Office Hours

  • Don’t give students the answers (and don’t let them look at the solution key – in fact, guard it like a hawk and avoid referring to it as much as you can).  Your first question should be, “Show me what you’ve done so far.”  If they don’t have anything to show, then you should direct them to at least sketch out the problem and solution strategy and then try to lead them to the right answer by asking questions to get them to discover it for themselves.  Make use of the white board as much as possible to get them to solve the problem themselves!  Do not work out the detailed solution for a student.
  • Do not let students hang out at other grad students’ desks in the area, if you are holding office hours in your own office.Don’t let them work at computers that have grading spreadsheets or solution key files on them.

Homework Grading

  • We will give you solutions to the problems for the next week’s homework set on Friday.Make sure the solutions don’t get into student hands: we don’t want our solutions coming back at us next time we teach the course and assign the same problems.   Review the solutions to the problems in advance (and check them) and be prepared to respond to student questions during office hours without heavy reliance on the answer key.  Note any typos on the solution key and watch for students who duplicate these typos.  Typically students who copy solution keys do not check for accuracy.
  • We accept late homework until 8:15AM on Monday.Homework that is submitted any time after the posted time gets docked 20 points off the top.  We do not accept homework after 8:30 on Monday since the homework will have already been returned.
  • After the first few assignments, most of the required homework will be done by students working in teams. Each member of the team gets the same assignment grade. We don’t particularly care about inter-team collaboration as long as the solutions aren’t identical.  If you see “carbon copies” or anything that looks fishy, alert the instructors and we will take it from there.  This is even easier to check when the students start handing in Excel files (“Properties” will reveal the author and time/date stamp, and we DO check).   If in doubt about a paper, ask one of the instructors.

And now for the nitty gritty details:

  • Grade papers using red ink so corrections are clear.Circle incorrect or “missing” material so the mistake is clear and students cannot go back later and add material.
  • The same person should grade a particular problem for all of the students so that (1) you will be consistent and (2) you will detect duplication or common mistakes.
  • Draw a line down the blank part of the page following the homework solution to indicate that it was blank.
  • Don’t grade anything written on the back of a sheet of paper.
  • Indicate on the outside of the paper if either the electronic copy or the hard copy of a computer assignment is missing.
  • Always grade the homework in groups of at least two TAs.If possible, work together on the grading rubric so that you are consistent about how you take off points in different problems or have a second opinion if you suspect anyone of cheating.
  • If you ever have any questions about grading, cheating, or anything else, check with the instructors.