SECTION 2: CONDUCTING SECTIONS

Introduction

Discussion sections are an extremely important part of your job in the course. During sections, you not only teach material but help students separate more important from less important information. Sections give students the opportunity to ask questions and to learn through discussions you will facilitate. Perhaps most importantly, this intellectual give and take will help you learn what students have understood from material presented in the most recent lectures and readings. You will often need to reformulate and integrate information from a wide variety of sources, while providing a forum in which students can share ideas. Though daunting at first, you will learn how to do this all!

What you should expect from the students?

Some students come to sections with little or no preparation. They view sections as the time when they will really learn the material. Unfortunately, this results in the expectation that TAs would present a mini lecture covering all the past week's material. Over the past few years, we have implemented changes intended to make students aware that they are responsible for studying the material before section.

Together with the faculty, you need to set the tone for what you expect from students as they come to section. This needs to be emphasized in the syllabus, in lecture and in the sections. The ideal would be that all students come to section prepared so the discussion can be about deeper issues amongst informed discussants. In reality, we have students of different backgrounds and different levels of preparedness. Given this diversity of prior states, there are numerous practical planning tips below you can use to prepare for teaching.

Setting goals:

You should begin the quarter by clarifying the goals of the section instruction. This means coming to an understanding with the faculty and other TAs about what you can expect to cover in section. It is important to emphasize that the students are ultimately responsible for learning the material. Emphasize that one key goal is to help students develop analytical skills that will be useful in any course. Much more than knowing the processes of cellular respiration, you want them to emerge with the ability to tackle problems effectively using principles they already know, to draw connections to other areas of their experience, and to add new skills to their repertoire. Help the students come to have realistic expectations of the section. Be sure to discuss these goals with the faculty.

Section Preparation and Planning

1) Use the same plan for all sections each week. The reason for this standardization is that students should all have had equal access to instruction throughout the quarter. Standardization can be best achieved by scheduling one TA each week to prepare a section outline. Be sure to discuss the content of your section plans with the faculty member responsible for teaching the material. This outline will need to incorporate clarifications of readings and lecture material as needed, and instructions for an interactive section exercise. A section outline should provide you with the guidance you need to lead an interesting discussion section and still meet goals you have set for that week. Take the outline as a suggested direction but not a strict plan. You may know from the problem sets that students in one of your sections are very well-versed in one aspect of the material but not in another, adjust the time spent on each topic accordingly. If students already grasp the factual information at hand, concentrate on discussion. However, discussion will be difficult to generate if students are unclear about the basic details in the lectures and readings which may require brief tutorials.

2) What do you need for section plans each week?

   A) Motivate the material. Why is this material relevant to the course? How does it fulfill the course’s objectives? How does it relate to past material, and how will it relate to future material in the quarter?

   B) Clarification of some lecture/reading material. From the results of the problem sets, are some topics not being understood? Do students ask about specific topics in section or office hours? Some formal instruction of lecture and reading material may be necessary and useful, particularly when the material is complex and abundant. However, as noted above, Human Biology Sections cannot be simply review sessions but must take students a step or two beyond their current level of analysis, and this happens through discussion and presentations.

   C) Pose interesting, motivating discussion questions. A key mission of Human Biology is to promote students’ oral expression, to encourage interaction with their peers, and to develop analytic skills in the evaluation of the merit of different arguments. Discussion is essential for these processes. To assure good discussion, you must plan time for this and prepare questions that will help students to synthesize and evaluate what they have been learning. To do this effectively, you must set the tone at the first section and keep this as a high priority. Resist the urge to lecture but learn how to bring students into a dialog with you and each other. Try to keep at least half the time for open ended questions. You will learn by experience what constitutes good discussion questions, and some good examples are given below. Avoid questions with “yes” or “no” answers but rather ask questions that generate momentum within the group. In summary: 
  • Pose questions that require integration of old and new material. 
  • Probe beneath the surface of the material: present it from a new angle or in a new context. 
  • Craft questions that allow for student creativity. 
  • Sharpen your listening skills. Learn to gauge the level of students’ understanding. If students seem lost, re-evaluate the emphases of your presentation. Don’t be afraid of silence. More often than not, a big silence will follow a question you pose. This time allows students an opportunity to actually think about what you’ve just said. When they do speak, try to respond in a way that facilitates, rather than dominates, the discussion (This requires flexibility on your part to decide which path to follow: your planned one or a student generated one). During discussions, restate important points over and over again. This will provide some structure to the discussion and help students who miss relevant points the first time around.

   D) Classroom Exercises. Initiating discussion is not the only way to solidify students’ understanding of material. Classroom exercises are useful when students need to master numerous details to understand the material. If your course’s sections tend to be dominated by the TA up at the overhead lecturing, it is important to create a variety of ways to involve students. The typical way to do this is asking questions directly to the class, which should be a standard part of all sections. However, often only a select few of the students usually answer and can dominate the section. The rest of the class remains passive. It spices section up to include some other activities. 

• One method is to break students up into small groups and have them prepare material on a particular subject to the class. This way every student must contribute and think about the material. This method only works if the material is fairly straight-forward.
• Another way to make sections more interesting is to have a demonstration or interactive activity. This give them a clear visualization of what was happening in the cell and made them participate. If you can arrange it, demonstrations using props add some fascination and excitement to sections and aid in understanding.
• Another standard method to get students involved is to call one up to the board to explain a particular subject or to complete a problem from the problem set. TAs who have already worked one on one with a student may call them up to the board if the TAs know ahead of time that the student will be comfortable with it.  Otherwise, calling students up to the board may put the students in an awkard position.

   E) The First Day of Section. Here’s a practical checklist you may want to use before the first day (partially excerpted from the CTL’s introductory handbook, Teaching at Stanford):

Get ready for the first day of class: 
   • Check out location and appropriateness of the assigned room. Is it seminar-style, so everyone can sit around a central table? Is the blackboard visible to all? If you were accidentally assigned a lecture-style room, try to get this remedied as soon as possible, for it can reduce the likelihood of open discussion.  
   • Request any audiovisual, multimedia, or experimental equipment a few days before the class meets.  
   • Bring copies of syllabus and general course information handouts to be distributed to students. These course handouts should include information about: course description/objectives, lecture topics, readings, course requirements/prerequisites, scheduling of exams/projects, grading policies, honor code issues, and sources of outside assistance, such as Human Biology tutors at CTL. Prepare a handout with your name, office hours, office phone number, email address, and if you desire, some brief background information about yourself (e.g. are you a Hum Bio major, what is your Area of Concentration, etc.).

On the First Day: REMEMBER THE FIRST DAY SETS THE TONE 
   • Introduce yourself and have the students introduce themselves. Have students make name tags that they place in front of themselves using cards folded down the middle and dark markers. You may want to begin with an icebreaker to ease the awkwardness. For instance, in the past, some TAs have asked the students to state their name, year, hometown, etc. While the class is doing this, try to learn as many names as possible. Take attendance as well.  
   • You may want to take pictures of your students while they hold cards with their names on it. This photographic record will be helpful to a substitute TA who has to teach your class.  
   • Discuss syllabus and/or course goals. Mention overarching themes that connect the guest lecturers.  
   • Identify and clarify Human Biology’s goals (interdisciplinary study, verbal expression, respect for different points of view, etc.) and how they relate to your expectations for the class members. Emphasize that section is designed to be both formally instructive and interactive.  
   • Encourage questions and comments from students. Ask what they expect from you.  
   • You need to be sure and present material at the first section, just as you will every week.  
   • The White/Black-board. Make sure you begin class with enough markers or chalk, an eraser, and a clean writing surface. Plan ahead in your use of the board. Find out how big your writing should be and the optimal amount of writing the board can take (remember: too much writing may be more distracting than helpful).  Be neat.  Students are copying., 
   • Overhead Projector. Transparencies can be hard to read or decipher unless they are carefully prepared. Write bigger and more clearly than you think you need to and be sure to check the transparency on your own before showing it the class. Don’t let an overhead be an excuse for overloading students with information, keep the text organized and as spare as possible. Leave room on the transparencies for students to fill in information as they participate.

Sensitive and thoughtful section preparation is valuable to allow you to reach as many people as possible. However, the breadth of student background in a major like Hum Bio means that you'll have some stars in section, and some people who have problems with the material and are very upset about it. Learning to pace the material to satisfy everyone can be extremely challenging. One way to keep brighter students from becoming frustrated is to use them as teachers. They won't feel like they're wasting time if they are helping those who are struggling with the material. However, you will also need to develop tact to direct confused students to seek help outside section in the interest of keeping things moving.

TAs usually desire discussion, but many students usually feel they need more instruction. Students say “we can’t think about and discuss the material if we can’t understand it.” What they mean is that if lectures and readings are unclear, then the students rely on TAs (who supposedly think more like them than faculty) to re-present the material in accessible ways. Students seem to appreciate you most when you make charts with rows and columns to organize similarities and differences, or when you make flow charts with arrows to show progressions. They need help putting the information together and separating more important from less important topics. More genuine discussion sections can fall flat if people do not understand the basic concepts. However, do not raise the expectation that you will always review the information, so that students just come to section as passive observers. They will then resent free-flowing discussions.

As TAs, you should discuss among yourselves how to conceptualize the material to be presented in section. Keep in mind that what we're asking them to become challenging, critical participants in their own education, and to understand that there is significant uncertainty in our understanding.

The greatest gift of a teacher is the ability to take the perspective of the student. Try to remember what might have helped you most as you entered the core.

  F) Handouts. An outline for the section is absolutely crucial for clarifying section material and maintaining consistency between section leaders, however, handouts to the students are not always necessary. Decide as a group how much material you will distribute. Sometimes, you may feel that the sheer bulk of the material demands an extensive handout. Avoid giving a student too much material since students reach a saturation point beyond which even the most vivid and articulate handout will not help. For that matter, some sort of activity or discussion which requires students to draw upon and process the material tends to be more effective than just repeating it as they saw it in lecture. Handouts that require them to reorganize or analyze the material can be quite useful and are easy to prepare.