Guest Column - Teaching - Dharmesh Jain

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They (whoever they are) say that teaching is a crucial part of one’s academic life. And so I thought it was a good idea that we as graduate students were being introduced to such a crucial part in our first year of graduate studies itself. This was in the form of a course called ‘Teaching’, which was worth some credits, i.e., we were graded; not just satisfactory/unsatisfactory but A/A-/B+/B/B- (B- is equivalent to fail for graduates!). 

First year teaching was mandatory as it is a prerequisite for ‘advancing to PhD candidacy’. Most of us did it in second year too because it acted as a source of funding till we found an adviser willing to fund us as ‘research assistants’ for the rest of our stay. This course mostly involved the task of ‘teaching’ Lab courses to undergraduates. However, a few (un)lucky graduates got the task of ‘grading’ courses instead.

Let me first give you a glimpse of what ‘teaching’ labs involved:

AIM: To take a satisfactory 2 hour Undergraduate Lab Class at least twice per week for the full semester.

SETUP: You, Lab Room full of relevant equipment, Experiment Manual, Time.

PROCEDURE: Everything is more or less set up in the lab room by the lab manager(s). You glance through the manual and check (preferably before the class begins) all the dozen or so experimental setups and verify that they are in working conditions. 

(Note: This is different from KGP where there are different experiments permanently set up and the students using those setups change bi/tri-weekly. Here the students are permanently positioned and the experimental setup gets changed every week.) 

Take two or three readings to familiarize yourself with the experiment. It’s better if you do that on all the setups so you can figure out any quirks of the equipment and can impress the undergrads (but let the undergrads do something too, ok)! Now, wait for the class to begin. After the students settle down, explain to them briefly the theory behind today’s experiment. And tell them to begin the experiment as they are supposed to have read the manual themselves.

OBSERVATIONS: Most of them haven’t read the manuals so you will have to explain what they are supposed to do too. Finish that quickly because remember, the class is of 2 hours only and they are supposed to take all the readings by then so you can’t go on explaining things for half an hour.

CALCULATIONS: You can keep counting how many times you have to explain the same thing to different groups of students even after explaining that same thing on the blackboard at the very beginning!

ERROR ANALYSIS: There will be many errors in their reports. Mark judiciously. And from next time, tell them what you expect in their reports. That won’t reduce the errors so next time, give them a generic template of the report you expect from them. That will reduce some errors but that will increase your work-load as they will now expect you to give them specific templates for every damn experiment.

DISCUSSION: Best of Luck! See you after 2 years at the other end of the tunnel.

Let us now discuss how ‘grading’ courses works. This job is a piece of cake compared to the above but there are a few catches that you need to tackle very early on:

1) Do you have to attend the classes too? That can be fun sometimes, but most of the time, you should do your own HWs in there or just grade the HWs that you have just collected.

2) It will take a lot of time to grade HWs if there are ~150 students in the class even if the HWs are multiple choice questions! And if the professor asks you to tabulate the answers and show him the distribution that the students’ answers form, you can forget there are 2 days in the weekend. Pray he doesn’t ask you to fit some curve to that distribution. On the plus side, you will be able to read hilarious ‘out of context’ answers even for ‘simple’ questions. 

For example:

Q1: What do you intend to gain from this course? 

 ⇒ Tranquility

Q2: How many hours do you intend to study for this course? 

 ⇒ Million

Qn: Are you an optimist or a pessimist about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the Galaxy?  

⇒ Pessimist but Moody

Q∞: Are you ready for the final? 

A: Absolutely!
B: Almost.
C: I will be.
D: Final? What final?  
⇒The statistics for the answers were as follows:

A – 16; B – 37; C – 74; D – 15; E: I fear this final like a mother fears for a newborn child – 1.

3) Undergrads will definitely argue with you for more marks. But if you tell them the increase won’t affect their grade, they somehow stop bothering you… Unfortunately, that ‘trick’ can’t be used too often and works only around the end of the semester!

4) Grading graduate courses is a bit involved (esp. regarding the issue of partial credits) but it has its own perks as grads aren’t too aggressive about getting more marks.

5) Do you have to solve the HWs yourself before you can grade the submissions? That is a real time-burner… But do your best, you’ll learn something too in the process. If not some Physics, let it be LaTeX!

6) Do you have to proctor the exams and grade them too on the same day? You are in for a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience… Enjoy!

So that’s what one has to do for the first 2 years of graduate studies at SBU. 

Full Disclosure: I graded a UG course in the first year (same in both semesters) and 2 Grad courses (QM & SM) in the second year. I did teach a lab in the summer of my first year so what I’ve written above is not sheer fabrication. 

On that positive note, here’s wishing you a

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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