Week 2 – Grading, Professionalism

📖 Readings

✍️ Homeworks 2 and 3 (due Sunday, January 26th, midnight)

Part 1: Shadow an Experienced Tutor

Find an experienced tutor in the class you are tutoring for and “shadow” them (i.e. follow them around and observe them) during their office hours for at least 30 minutes. Preferably choose a time that will be busier, e.g. the day that homework is due.

Then, answer the following questions.

What is the tutor’s name and what class are they a tutor for?
How many times have they tutored, and for which class(es)?
What problems did students ask about? Describe them in as much detail as possible.
How did the tutor answer those problems? Describe their answers in as much detail as possible.
What was the tutor’s approach to answering follow-up questions?
Was there a situation where the tutor didn’t know the answer? What did they do?
What was the tutor’s strategy to answer student questions quickly?
In what manner did the tutor communicate with the student – were they formal? Encouraging? Casual? Straightforward?
What feedback would you give the tutor on how to improve – that is, what would you have done differently?

Part 2: Anticipating Questions

It’s a good idea to anticipate what students may be struggling while preparing for office hours, so that you can come prepared with good explanations. To do so, identify three questions that students in your class might have based on this week’s lecture material.

Submit your answers on Gradescope (HW3)

There are two parts to Homework 3:

Part 1: Questions for Experienced Tutors (due on Sunday, October 6th)

Our upcoming class will be a panel led by experienced tutors from different classes.

We’ll have an open-ended period at the end of the panel where you can ask questions of the panelists. However, to ensure our discussion time is used wisely, we’d like you to submit two questions that you’d like to hear the panelists answer. Your questions can be directed at all of the panelists, or at a specific panelist.

Part 2: Sample Grading

In this part, you’ll grade a DSC20 midterm question from a few years ago. A rubric isn’t provided for you – you’ll have to create it yourself. To submit your work, answer the questions in the Gradescope form linked above.

You may wonder why you’re being asked to grade a coding problem despite not tutoring for DSC10/20/30/80. The answer is that the process of creating a rubric is quite similar regardless of the medium!

We’re not going to provide you with the solution or the rubric (though feel free to message on Slack if you’re unsure of the answer). What we have provided you with three (real) student solutions. Your job is:

create a rubric for a given problem.
grade all three answers using your rubric.