TA Teaching Tips

Explaining Experiments
Raffaella Borzi-Spellman, Physics

My job as a Physics Lab teaching assistant involves explaining the experiments and the procedures which will be carried out during a lab session and then supervising the students as they work. The following suggestions have been helpful in making me a more effective TA: Prepare your talks, but without looking like someone who has learned a speech by memory. As you explain an experiment try to involve the students in your explanation. Ask a student to help you with your demonstrations. Ask for suggestions on how to proceed and what measurements to make in order to achieve the goals of the experiment .Try to capture their attention. Make them feel comfortable about asking you a question, any question. Make mistakes to see if their are listening to you. Draw analogies between what you are teaching and real life experience. If you have a long experiment try to divide your lesson into different parts or you will loose their attention. Divide the work into smaller goals. When they reach one goal you can explain the next and they can move ahead. Prepare to understand the different levels of your students. Follow up with the slower ones , make them comfortable even if they are slow. "The result is what matters". Make the faster ones do extra fun work. At the end of the experiment review with them what they have learned that day. Have a good attitude; be happy and smile.

Turning Questions Into Learning Experiences
Steve Lewis, Physics

When students ask you a question, it is not your job to simply answer the question. Evaluate the question and turn it into a learning experience. I often answer questions with other questions. For example, a student asks, "Which of these instruments is a voltmeter?" You respond: "What do you think a voltmeter should look like? What features should it have?" The student names some features and you help them identify the instrument based on their answer. Another example, a student builds a circuit for an electronics lab and asks you to examine the circuit to see if it was built correctly. Rather than examining the circuit, I ask them what they expect to see on the oscilloscope. If the scope shows something different, then I ask questions to see how the student reached his conclusions. If one of his assumptions is wrong, I ask more questions to get him to see that the assumption was wrong. You can also use these times to teach them techniques to help them in the lab. I often go to students and just start asking questions about the experiment. This gives them an opportunity to tell me what they know, and lets me know what type of progress they are making. I can often catch mistakes before they create delays in retaking data.

Some of my students have found this approach annoying at first, but I have found it helps them become independent thinkers. Their answers to my questions help me to evaluate progress and ability. They stop asking simple questions and begin asking more complex questions. Of course, you shouldn't answer all questions with questions. Getting to know the students and their strengths and weaknesses should help you judge the proper balance.

Supervising Labs
Steven Baldwin, Physics

At the beginning of each lab, during the 10-15 minutes alloted to the TA to explain the important points to be accomplished, I have found that most students generally try to pay attention. In one particular instance, though, there were 2 students in the back of the lab who continued to talk during my initial lecture. Rather than stop and ask them to be quiet so that others could hear, I simply continued speaking but walked to the back of the room where I went on with my lecture. I never explicitly acknowledged the two nor stood by them to embarrass them, but instead continued to address the class. I found that this movement alone not only kept the attention of the ones who had already been paying attention, but also captured the attention of the two who were talking. In a short while I was able to walk back to the front and finish my lecture at the board without distraction. By doing this I found that I could get the attention of a slightly disruptive few without stopping my lecture or explicitly embarrassing them. Students seem much more willing to learn under such circumstances.