Notes for Teaching Assistants — Tutorial 2

In this session, you will have students present their summaries of Part 1-2 of their assignment, and you will introduce the second part of the assignment-prototyping and walkthroughs-as well as providing detailed expectations.

Materials you will need:

• The 481 TA binder, including the notes for the 2nd tutorial (the walkthrough overheads included in last week's materials)

Assignment 1, Section 1: Identification and requirements

• Tell students that the purpose of student presentations is:
  • To make sure students have started serious work on their assignments
  • For you to catch and advise groups that are heading in the wrong direction
  • For other students to comment, critique, and learn from each other's work
• Depending on the size of your tutorial, you have to limit the time each group has. Give groups in large tutorials around 10 minutes, and small tutorials about 15 minutes.  This includes the presentation time and feedback/question time so it is not as much as it first seems!   Don't let things get out of hand, otherwise the tutorial will be going far too long. Also, if students get bogged down in details, tell them to stop what they are doing and get onto the next part (i.e., don't be scared of taking charge!)
• Get their grading sheet. Mark on it in the appropriate place how prepared the group was and the level of sophistication/maturity shown in the presentation.  Don't be afraid to give low ratings and tough but honest critiques of their presentations! Critical comments now will usually make groups work harder.
• In your grade book, indicate what group a person belongs to and whether they participated in the presentation (I want to email people that didn't come...)
• Each group should summarize the results of the main headings of their report Section 1, i.e.,:
  • Introduction. Describes briefly and in general terms the background to the system. Make sure that:
    • The project is appropriate (i.e., check with groups who are doing a non-standard project and not on the list of standard projects that they cleared it with me first, to make it easy on the TA if they ask you permission for a non-standard project then just send them to me)
    • They describe the general problem to be solved
    • They describe the expected users,
    • They describe their work contexts, and
    • They describe what users will use the envisaged system for.
  • Concrete task examples. They should show one or two task examples. Make sure
    • Tasks have the properties listed in Appendix 1 of Assignment 1
    • They describe some of the major implications of the task e.g., the class of the expected user (e.g., a typical customer), the relative importance of the task (e.g., frequently done and important, infrequently done but still important, rare and not important, etc), and other nuances
    • Ask the students:
      • How they elicited the task (e.g., actually going onsite and having user discussions and observations of actual work, did they just make it all up etc.)
      • How the task was validated (ideally if groups made up the info. for task and user descriptions for the presentation then this may be okay because of the tight timeline but tell them that they should meet with actual users before they hand in the first assignment).
  • Tentative list of requirements. They should list the major system requirements and priorities as well as a brief description of why requirements were prioritized the way that they were.
• If any group is way off base, and you are not sure what to tell them, send them to me.