When do I teach?
You will lecture in the first and/or second terms. In the third term you will invigilate and mark your examinations and supervise individual projects. Supervision of MSc projects continues throughout the summer.
What is a PPT?
PPT stands for Personal Programming Tutorial, Personal Programming Tutor, or Personal Programming Tutees. You will be assigned a group of tutees and a UTA (undergraduate teaching assistant). A typical group would consist of your personal tutees and another member of staff's personal tutees. For the first two terms of their first year every student gets a programming exercise every week which is auto-tested by comparing it with the output from a correct program and then marked by a UTA, supervised by the member of staff responsible for the group. The UTA will mark the work and lead the relevant discussions, but the member of staff will have overall responsibility. If you are assigned a PPT group you should see the UTA before each weekly meeting to find out any problems, and discuss the session. You should also be at each PPT session to ensure that all is going well and to reinforce the message of the UTA if needed. Other responsibilities would include making sure that the students work is returned promptly once marked and that any problems they have had with it are discussed and that they receive advice on how to start the next exercise. Finally although it is the UTA who enters the marks you are responsible for ensuring that all tutees marks and attendance are entered into the CATE system. This needs to be done on a weekly basis so that the Senior Tutor can chase up students who are having problems. Academics are either a Personal Programming Tutor (PPT) or a Personal Mathematics Tutor (PMT).
What is a PMT?
PMT stands for Personal Mathematics Tutorial, Personal Mathematics Tutor, or Personal Mathematics Tutees. You will be assigned a group of tutees and a UTA (undergraduate teaching assistant). For the first two terms of their first year every student gets a maths (logic, discrete maths, reasoning) exercise every week that the UTA picks up from the Student Administrative Office (SAO). The UTA will mark the work and lead the relevant discussions, but you will have overall responsibility for supervising these sessions. If you are assigned a PMT group you should see the UTA before each weekly meeting to find out any problems, and discuss the session. You should also be at each PMT session to ensure that all is going well and to reinforce the message of the UTA if needed. You should also ensure that work is marked and returned promptly and that the students get appropriate feedback regarding any problems they have had with the work and advise them on how to start the next exercise. Finally you will need to ensure that their marks and attendance are entered in the CATE system. This needs to be done on a weekly basis so that the Senior Tutor can chase up students who are having problems. Students also study Mathematical Methods but this course has its own tutoring arrangements and is not covered by the PMT system. Academics are either a Personal Programming Tutor (PPT) or a Personal Mathematics Tutor (PMT).
How is it decided whether I am a PPT or a PMT?
It is decided based on the needs of the Department and your area of interest. In September the Senior Tutor makes up the groups and if you would prefer another type of group talk to her then and if she can, she'll give you the type of group you would request.
I have personal tutees. What is my responsibility towards them?
Please see http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~dfg/SeniorTutor/PersonalTutoringIntroduction.html
I haven't seen my tutees is this a problem?
Inform both the First Year Teaching Fellow (Brian Mitchell) and the Senior Tutor (Maria Valera-Espina) .
One of my tutees has a personal problem that I cannot solve. What do I do?
Inform both the First Year Teaching Fellow (Brian Mitchell) and the Senior Tutor (Maria Valera-Espina) of:
(a) absentees from your classes and
(b) students who are consistently failing to submit work or are performing very poorly
(c) students who may have problems that you feel you cannot help them with.
What is an average teaching load?
This varies depending on the size of the class and the person's general interests but is between 1.5 and 2 lecture courses, a ppt or pmt group and about 8 assorted projects.
What are my teaching responsibilities altogether?
A description of your teaching responsibilities can found at http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/internal/problecturers/2/faq2.html
I have been assigned to teach a course. What are my total commitments to that course?
Courses consist of 27 hours (normally 18 hours of lectures and 9 hours of tutorials but you can vary these). Courses have both coursework and examinations associated with them and you will be responsible for producing these.
I would like to teach a different course next year. What should I do?
Talk to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (Peter McBrien) as soon as possible.
I would like to offer a brand new course. Is this possible? If so what should I do?
First talk to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (Peter McBrien) about pragmatics. The timetable is very full and in general a course needs to disappear to make room for a new course. If the signs are good then you need to prepare a syllabus in the style of the others and get it approved by Academic Committee. Realistically if you want to teach something in Academic Year N then it needs to start getting approval by the April Academic Committee in Year N-1.
I have comments back from the students on my teaching. Should I do anything about what they said?
Firstly look at https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/teaching/sole_leq/ to see how your colleagues have done. If your ratings are good then you need to be selective about what changes you make. If you are a Probationary Lecturer go talk to your mentor about what they said. If they are very poor then you need to discuss your teaching with the Director of Studies (who has read the comments and seen the ratings) about what you can do to improve your teaching. If you need more concerted advice our Director of Curriculum (Tony Field) will spend time with you to help sort things out. It is not uncommon for students to write quite unpleasant comments. Nevertheless if several of them have the same criticism (no matter how unpleasantly stated) then there is probably something worth changing. It is not uncommon for it to take a couple of years to get your teaching to a satisfactory level. Usually it requires very small changes to get satisfactory ratings.
How is allocation of lecture courses done?
There is relatively little change from year to year. If a course runs well and the member of staff wishes to keep it then usually this happens. In March members of staff are asked for their preference. In the June Academic Committee meeting a draft of the proposed allocation is discussed, amended and approved. This is available for all staff a few days after the meeting.
Tutorial assistants turn up to my tutorials. What am I supposed to do with them?
Ideally you will be able to find out if you are going to receive tutorial helpers by consulting the departments database in which case you should brief your helpers about the tutorial well before the tutorial. However if the above scenario does happen you should firstly explain to your helpers how you expect the tutorials to run. It is permissible for your helpers to do the marking of assessed coursework: so if you wish them to do this you should give them precise guidelines for the marking schema, and ensure that all marked coursework is returned to you not to the Student Admin Office. Finally if the helper is a student, you will have to sign a claim form that the student fills in. Instructions on how to brief and prepare you helpers for tutorials can be found at https://tsc.doc.ic.ac.uk/.
I don't understand how courseworks are graded. Do the students get actual grades (say between 1 and 10) or do they only get passed / failed grades?
You chose the maximum mark (e.g. 10 or 100 say) and type in numerical marks to our system. It converts them to a letter grade for the students and you should put that grade on their script. You can put + and - if you so wish as well. The grades are the following:
Mark range (%) | Grade |
---|---|
[90-100] | A* |
[80-89) | A+ |
[70-79) | A |
[60-69) | B |
[50-59) | C |
[40-49) | D |
[30-39) | E |
[0-29) | F |
Are the final exam grades independent of tutorial grades?
Coursework marks are added to exam marks for each subject to give a single mark, which appears on the student's transcript. What percentage the coursework counts depends on the degree. MSc degrees weight coursework more lightly than undergraduate degrees.