Blog 2

Wow! Another day full of ideas intended to make my life as a TA easier has passed. The first hour was reserved for "staging" the first class session. The goal was to present the material to be covered and myself in a manner that keeps the students interested. Although I have done this for four semesters, I felt some butterflies in my stomach as my number was drawn. Standing in front of a (small) group of peers who didn't have a clue what is going on in a coronary lab made this experience almost real. And the fact that Dr. Meeuwsen walked in the moment I started talking made the butterflies just move a little faster. I guess, this was an excellent practice session to improve my public speaking. I really appreciated the discussion lead by the Assistant Dean of Student involving classroom interruptions and cheating. I wish this information would have been available to me two semesters ago when a student had it in his head that his job was to entertain the class. I dealt with his "clowning around" way too long until it became so annoying and disruptive to the whole class that we all decided to completely ignore him.

The rest of the activities were primarily directed towards creating an active learning experience that will help students succeed and on grading strategies that will save me time. The videos about how to manage a classroom and get the students to do what they are supposed to do were an excellent tool to show us what may happen when the TA is unable to actively involve the students in their learning process. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if I had to watch my own performance every once in a while! The brainstorming session involving the grading strategies yielded some interesting and usable results. Again, I wish some of these strategies would have been available to me while I was grading the coronary lab reports. The grading of the biomechanics lab reports seems somewhat easier since it involves primarily math problems, which are straight forward without much room for interpretation. To save some time and to be consistent in giving partial credit, I may suggest to the second TA that we grade the lab reports together: She grades the even numbers, and I grade the odd ones.