Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez

This is also posted on medium . This is post #2 of a 5 post series on how I organize the teaching staff for my 200+ student class. I have seven different roles in my teaching staff organized into a three-layered hierarchy. This post drills down into each teaching staff’s role by outlining their tasks and responsibilities. I close with some general thoughts. The other posts in this series are as follows (I’ll update with links as I post): Overview Teaching staff roles (You are here) How I communicate with my teaching staff How I track the to-do list How I run the head staff meetings Here’s the organization chart from the overview post again as a reminder of all the TA roles. My TA+ is a full-time staff member of the department (not a student) assigned to my class. The TAs are graduate students. UTAs are undergraduate students. Most UTAs teach a lab in pairs with about 25 students per lab. One section of the course includes one lab and two lectures per week. If I have multiple lecture se...

This is also posted on medium . This is post #1 of 5 on how I organize and structure the teaching staff for my introductory computer science (CS1) class, CS101 "Introduction to Computer Science." This class has over 200 students each semester, with the fall semesters typically having 30-50 more students than the spring semesters. This post will be information on my background, context, teaching staff structure with a handy graphic, and organization generally. Future posts will contain more details on teaching assistant (TA) roles and duties, how we communicate, how we track tasks, and how I run my meetings. The other posts in this series are as follows (I’ll update with links as I post): Overview (You are here) Teaching staff roles How I communicate with my teaching staff How I track the to-do list How I run the head staff meetings Background I learned a lot about how to organize TAs when I was in grad school at UC Berkeley. I was a teaching assistant at UC Berkeley's CS1...

Over one week, I went to two overlapping virtual conferences, ICER and Learning@Scale (L@S). Both usually are in person but were virtual due to Covid-19. Here is my reflection on the experience for the sake of those planning a virtual conference, those attending a virtual conference, and myself. First off, the biggest pro to the virtual conferences is I got to attend! If Covid-19 had not forced the conferences to go online, I would not have attended either. ICER's locations go back and forth between in and not in North America. This year was a non-North America year and would have been in New Zealand. After I had my first child and an overseas trip away from him, I decided that while my kids were small, I wouldn't travel outside North America without them unless I had a solid reason. We also recently added another child to the family. So traveling that far with a 3-year-old and a 4-month-old was daunting and unaffordable. L@S was originally going to be in Atlanta, Georgia, in...

Codio  asked if I'd be interested in sharing my expertise on scalable formative assessments through a webinar  on July 14th, 1PM EDT ( slides ). I liked the idea given our future for the next academic year. Moreover, it was an opportunity for me to consolidate my thoughts on the scalable formative assessment techniques I use and reflect on how I currently do it, as well as how I can be better. To help with my thought process, I wrote this blog post. Then this post could also provide all the relevant resources and references in one place, like a companion piece for the webinar. For context, when I'm referring to things like lecture, I'm talking about in-person live lectures because that's where my experience lies. I do write about ideas for remote teaching since that is the world many are likely facing. For full disclosure, I am getting an honorarium from Codio for doing this webinar. However, I do not use Codio nor have plans to use it in the future. They also included ...