Advice for Teaching Session 1, Introduction to Algorithms

You should have enough time to cover the material carefully, so there is no need to rush.

The main steps for the tutorial are as follows:

1. One of the TAs for the teaching session should pick up the laptop, name tags and attendance sheets from Jeanne.  You can coordinate between yourselves which TA does the pickup.

2. Introduce yourself to your fellow TAs.  Decide among yourselves how you will deliver the material.  You may have one TA do most of the instruction and have the second TA help with the breakout sessions and questions.  An alternative is to take turns during the teaching session.  If you do this, please coordinate it so that the presentation has an even pace for the students.  You do not have to follow the same structure each week.  As you get to know one another and the material, you will find a system that works for you.  One word of caution, please do not undermine your fellow TA in front of the class.  If a mistake is made, and they certainly do happen, present the clarification in a positive way, or, if possible, present the clarification to your fellow TA privately, and let them make the correction to the class.

If you think the introduction between TAs will take some time, you might want to do this over e-mail, or in a quick meeting before the tutorial.  The names of your fellow TAs are on the schedule that Jeanne sent to you.

3. Set up the data projector and laptop and queue up the Powerpoint slides.

4. Take attendance.  You may choose to do this later in the tutorial than the start.  This is fine, but please make sure that you always take attendance for each tutorial.  As we discussed in our TA meeting, attendance in tutorials will effect the students grade.  Please use the time taking attendance as an opportunity to get to know the student names.  The teaching sessions will seem much friendlier and maybe even more productive, if you know the student names.  If a student misses more than half the tutorial, you should consider them absent.  Please do not tell the students that we are being this lenient, as they may take advantage of this fact.  As far as the students are concerned, they are expected to be present from the beginning of the teaching session.

5. Present the slides.  Some specific notes on the slides are provided below.

6. Wrap up the presentation.  Remind the students of what they are expected to work on for next week.  Return the laptop and attendance sheet to Jeanne.


Notes on Slides

Slide 1: Take some time and introduce both TAs.  Let the students know your names, your engineering discipline, your level and your computing experience.  If you have a personal anecdote that gives some insight into why you like computing, it would be nice if you could share this with the class.

Slide 4: The duration of the breakout sessions should be about 10 minutes.  When you have the students present their algorithms, a good idea (thanks to Brandon) is to have the students act out their algorithm.  This will be entertaining, engaging and a very clear way to present problems in their algorithm.  Some problems that you may notice include: not taking into account parked cars, not describing how to walk, not giving a termination criteria, etc.

Slide 21: Emphasize the following: although there will be different syntax and variations, program control in ENGINEER 1D04 comes down to just the three control structures of sequence, decision and iteration.

Slide 22: Assuming you have time, it is better to take the students through the derivation of the equations on Slide 23 before presenting this slide.  It would be nice to present the equations on the whiteboard, using student interaction.  If you just put up Slide 23 right away, it is too easy for the students to just gloss over the details and not really understand the task at hand.

Good luck with your teaching sessions and Have Fun!