Tools in TA's Work
Pedagogical tools and educational technology
Discussion activity
A scenario: students are doing a lab, the TA walks around answering questions and has to stand for a long time. What tools would you think of?
In your actual TA work, what tool do you want? What makes a "good" tool?
Common tools
Course-file storage management, course online documents, OJ or CI, visualization tools, cloud servers (how to provide them to students?).
From real TA work, tools can be grouped as:
- Course documentation: use open-source doc frameworks (e.g. Material for MkDocs) deployed to your own server or GitHub Pages; also commonly use Yuque and other online collaborative documents; VS Code's Storyteller plugin can assist with illustrated explanations.
- Assignment grading / comment writing: use simple scripts to make "review, grade, auto-jump to next" a workflow; unify submission format (e.g. PDF / a template table) for script processing.
- Course-materials management / documentation: watch version syncing and sustainable updates (see UC Berkeley CS375's material management).
- Online judge platforms: from OJ to CI platforms, each has characteristics and benefits; choose by course needs.
- Visualization tools: debugging-visualization (e.g. PythonTutor, VS Code pedagogical), and algorithm demos.
- Cloud servers: how to provide students a convenient, low-cost environment (e.g. avoiding environment setup burden).