As a teaching assistant for this course, I led weekly discussion sections (attended by 25-30 students) with the intent of engaging students more deeply with the material being covered in the course lectures.

My approach typically involved giving them a sense of the topics "in action," whether that is predicting and analyzing behavior as a class, discussing some problems in small groups, or physically working through an algorithm.

I took a mid-semester assessment of the discussion section to find out what students thought about it. I found positive constructive criticism in some of the comments. For example, one student wanted even more problems similar to those covered in discussion. After seeing this I told the class that I would be happy to point them to relevant exercises from their textbook. Another felt they did not understand the tasks well enough before being asked to work on them in small groups. For the remainder of the semester, I tried to explain the discussion material more thorougly and give them opportunities to ask questions before going to work.

At the end of the semester, students fill out "Student Response To Instruction" (SRTI) forms for their courses. They are anonymous and held in escrow until grades are submitted for the course. My students completed these for the discussion section I led in particular. The following are the numerical responses to these questions accompanied the average responses for recent offerings of the same course:

Question	Response Average	Recent Course Average
The section leader explained course material clearly.	4.45	4.01
The section leader cleared up points of confusion.	4.55	3.89
The section leader showed a personal interest in helping students learn.	4.73	3.89
Overall rating of the section leader's teaching [effectiveness].	4.55	3.94

Response Options and Numerical Values
1	Almost never
2	Rarely
3	Sometimes
4	Frequently
5	Almost always

Students had the option of giving anonymous comments as well:

• "I really enjoyed the group exercises because they allowed us to see how our peers approached problems in different ways"
• "Facilitated well"
• "Very approachable and willing to work through problems with you. He didn't just give you answers, he asked questions to get you to reason through the problem logically."
• "Office hours were very helpful"
• "Explains things clearly"
• "Section leader was inspiring"
• "He's good--very good"
• "[Professor] Allan and the TA rock. I need more classes with them!"

The students also filled out a similar form for the course as a whole, where the professor asked

Were the discussion sections helpful for you? Did they seem tied to the course material?

Below are some representative student comments:

• "Yes, very!"
• "Every discussion except the graph one towards the end was exceptional."
• "The discussion sections sometimes helped. They got better near the end of the semester."
• "For the most part they were helpful and tied to the material."
• "YES! They tied well, could use more time actually walking through it with larger groups."
• "Yes, they cleared up the material well."
• "At first but then not at all. Doing code was good but group examples was a waste."
• "Discussion was helpful and integrated well with the course material."

Overall, students felt my discussion section was worthwhile and noted an improvement over the term. At least one student's complaint and another's praise about group exercises confirm that there are many different learning styles. I continue to respect this by diversifying activities and the methods of presenting material.

For this course, students filled out a general SRTI (Student Response To Instruction) form. Although they were not asked explicitly to comment on the teaching assistant, two students thought fit to do so:

• "Awesome TA; always willing to help"
• "Great class, and Jerod was very helpful too"

As part of the UMass Center for Teaching's TA Orientation, I was invited to lead a workshop for teaching assistants in the sciences. Participants gave the following responses for an evaluation of the workshop.

Question	Response Average
The session provided opportunities for helpful exchanges with peers about teaching.	4.24
The session provided information on teaching, learning, or the TA role useful to new TAs	4.29
The presentation itself was skillfully done.	4.25
Considering everything, this presentation was rewarding and worthwhile.	4.12

Comments:

• "Very prepared even when projector won't work"
• "Well thought out"
• "Very great speaker, cares, enthustiastic & it helped with many questions I had"

Although I had planned to operate the discussion based on overhead slides, the projector failed to operate correctly. In hindsight, I am glad for this because using only a whiteboard kept the right pace and attention nicely focused on student interests.