Notes 20100909 TA Biol 208 Meeting

From SnOwy - Ed's Wiki Notebook

Contents 1 Homework (for us!) 2 Known Problems 3 What should be learned in the course 4 How is the responsibility for learning distributed between students and TAs? 5 Tutorial format 6 Discussion board 7 Tutorial content 8 Examination marking 9 ACE 10 Week 1 11 Schedule

Homework (for us!)

• prepare a brief abstract / description about yourself
• perhaps this will make students more inclined to contact you for help

Known Problems

• students may have an insufficient biology background
• techniques don't mean anything to them
• little experience designing experiments (design toward outcomes; why use controls)

What should be learned in the course

• that is, what are the pieces of information that should get stuck in students' brains
• concepts: what is an amino acid, what is a spec(trophotometer), ladders etc.,
• some things are learnt, other things we get a feel for
• learn: running a gel

How is the responsibility for learning distributed between students and TAs?

• we should aim to give enough attention that an average student gets an average mark
• we should not cause a brilliant student to be bored though
• there's of course the outliers in both cases: good performance not correlating with high interest and vice versa
• just be aware that this happens

Tutorial format

• are slide shows the right thing to do?
• discussion: pro -- keeps concepts fresh in mind to attack questions
• what if we reduced the slideshow time from 20 minutes to 10 minutes?
• discussion: if we use NCBI as a vehicle, a student may not learn very much because of the step-by-step nature of the procedure
• conclusion: 10 minute topic reviews only
• speak directly to quizzes without providing specifics

Discussion board

• use of discussion board for answering questions

Tutorial content

• review answers each week for Monday
• discuss answers at the meeting
• making up power points and creating or collecting questions exercises the information and diagnoses weaknesses in knowledge

Examination marking

• synchronize everyone's marking threshold
• we will all decide the same allotment of marks -- marked as a group

ACE

• we're waiting for ACE to display the content from previous years including the slide shows

Week 1

• genetic approaches
• biochemical approaches
• bioinformatics
• model organisms

Schedule

• Thurs 9:30a (101): April, Jennifer
• Thurs 5:30p (103): Matt, Melissa
• Thurs 11:30a (104): Eddie, Maye
• Fri 9:30a (102): Kyra, Maye