Responsibilities of the Intro COS Lab Head Team

Last updated on Nov 24, 2022 by

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
  - for 126, there is just a 126 debugging; takes about 30 minutes
  - for 226/217, there is a 226 debugging, 217 debugging, 226 conceptual, 217 conceptual question; takes about 45 minutes, probably give 1 hour to be safe
- use rubric
hire lab TAs
- hire on TigerUHR
- 126: probably need around 25 full time
- 226/217: probably need around 30-35 full time
- a few subs for each is good
schedule shifts
- use scheduling tool; some manual adjustment may be necessary afterwards
- things to keep in mind: 126 assignments are due Sunday, 226 assignments are due Monday, 217 assignments are due Tuesday/Thursday (check course website for exact schedule)
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 and Intro Lab TAs
- when is the lab closed for breaks
- when the lab closes for the term (Dean’s Date)
- when running a satisfaction survey
- when job applications open up
check attendance
- create an absence form that TAs fill out whenever they miss a shift, regardless of if they get a sub/swap; this way TAs can declare ahead of time if they are going to miss, and it’s in our records
- QTrack is a nice tool for looking at the students each TA has helped
- these scripts are useful for attendance and related statistics
compile report to determine Lab TA job assiduity

Once a year: