Responsibilities of the Intro COS Lab Head Team

Once a semester:

• Interview Lab TAs
  • Hire interviewers
  • Schedule interviews
    • Go through TigerUHR applications and select students to interview; students can list if 126 Lab TA or 226/217 Lab TA is one of their most preferred
    • Note that for returning Lab TAs, we don’t reinterview; just check their attendance from last semester and make a decision
  • Create interview questions
    • Usually use an assignment and add some bugs to it
    • The COS 126 interview consists of a COS 126 debugging questions and takes about 30 minutes
    • The COS 226/217 interview consists of a COS 226 debugging, COS 217 debugging, COS 226 conceptual, and COS 217 conceptual question. The interview takes about 45 minutes, but interviews should set aside 1 hour to be safe
  • Use rubric
• Hire Intro Lab TAs
  • Hire using TigerUHR
  • 126: probably need around 30-35 full time
  • 226/217: probably need around 35-40 full time
  • A few subs for each is good
• Schedule shifts
  • Use the scheduling tool; some manual adjustment may be necessary afterwards
  • Check the course websites and communicate with course staff to determine typical assignment deadlines for each course such that staffing is more substantial prior to deadlines.
• Train new Intro Lab TAs
• Add new Intro Lab TAs to the Slack

During the semester:

• Create a direct channel of communication between the Head Team and the COS Introductory teaching faculty on Slack to ask questions pertaining to course specifics
• Make announcements to students, Intro Lab TAs, and course faculty:
  • When the lab opens for the term
  • When is the lab closed for breaks or holidays
  • When the lab closes for the term (Dean’s Date)
  • When running a satisfaction survey
  • When job applications open up
• Check attendance
  • Create and check absence and sub/swap forms that TAs fill out whenever they miss a shift. This way TAs can declare ahead of time if they are going to miss a shift and it’s in our records
  • Check TA attendance regularly to follow up with TAs who haven’t been attending their shifts
    • QTrack is a nice tool for looking at the students each TA has helped
    • These scripts are extremely useful for attendance statistics and information about how full the lab is during specific days/shifts
    • TAs that do not meet expectations can be fired
• Collect feedback from TAs and students about the lab
• Create blog posts and initiatives such as shadowing, apps, etc. to further the lab’s ability to help students

Once a year:

• Hire the next Intro COS Lab Head Team (end of Nov. - first week of Dec.)
• Build a transition checklist
  • Add the new Head TAs to the #lab-management, #lab-faculty, and #payroll-management channels in Slack
  • Transfer TigerUHR access to new Head TAs for viewing and hiring applicants for COS 126 and 2xx Lab TAs
  • Add new Head TAs to the PrincetonCS-UCA Github org so can update website
  • Get new Head Lab TAs a labqueue API key
  • Make sure the new Head Lab TAs are hired in the Undergraduate Manager position on TimesheetX