Things I wish I had known...

including thoughts from prior year's speakers, as well

Diane Horton, U Toronto

• There is no one model of great teaching. You don't have to have trememdous stage presence, or be good at telling jokes. Just be genuine (and let your passion show) and you'll be fine.
• Students need to know that you are excited about the material you are teaching, and that you want them to succeed. If they see that you are on their team, they will have a much better learning experience -- and will be understanding about the little wrinkles that come up in any course.
• The first time you teach a course takes forever, and it won't be what you wanted. It gets easier each time. And the course will approach your target over time, if you reflect back on what worked well, what didn't work so well, and how to improve.
• It's easier to build on your experience if you keep a lecture log. Try to take a couple of minutes after class to write down practical things you'll use this term (like where you ended, or a question that you left students to think about) as well as ideas for the future (like an example you want to add or an explanation that needs work). Don't aim for perfection, just make a standard place to record this and throw stuff down when you can.

Emilie Barnard, Regional Manager Microsoft Philanthropies TEALS Program

• Super cliche, but be yourself! Students will appreciate your authenticity and will be able to relate to you better if you let your personality shine through.
• Be transparent (when appropriate). This can apply to course-specific pieces like grading and lesson organization, but also to bigger picture topics. On "syllabus day" I spend some time leading a discussion about impostor syndrome and its prevalence in CS. I am transparent about how it affects me personally and share personal tips on how I combat it on "imposter-y" days. I repeatedly receive positive feedback on this, especially from students who have never heard of the term before.
• This is something I "stole" from someone at a past SIGCSE conference: have students write in journals at the start of each class. Prompts can vary from current events related to tech, how students are feeling about the current project, or how students can relate what they're learning in class to their personal lives. I find this helps set the tone for the class, and it gives students something a bit more personal than graded work to remember their progress through the course. It also helps if students are late and can double as an attendance checker if that's something you need to record. They can be great icebreakers too - I sometimes have students share their responses with their neighbors.
• It's okay to not know everything! I honestly still haven't fully come to terms with this, but it's literally impossible to know everything, and there will be questions you don't know how to answer. Use these as a learning opportunity with your students. "I don't know, so let's find out together!" or "I'm not sure, but here's how I would find out" are both great responses. Follow up with a walk through on how you would find the answer so that your students can learn to help themselves.
• Always bring water and a few throat lozenges to class, especially on days when you have classes back-to-back.

Christine Alvarado, UC San Diego

• Only take advice that helps. I personally find long lists of suggestions overwhelming and usually more stressful than helpful. Remember that advice is just optional suggestions from someone who does not know exactly your own personal situation. If you feel like a piece of advice is not helpful or is making you more confused or stressed out, just ignore it.
• Don't stress about tenure. Pay attention to expectations and work to find a job whose requirements for tenure match your strengths and what you like doing. Then simply do your best at what you love.

Andrea Danyluk, Williams College

• To be a successful teacher, learn from others but don't try to be just like them. There are many different styles of "great teaching." Observe others, but in the end, be yourself and find what works for you.
• Give students a set of "free late late days" that they can "spend" over the course of the semester. Students are constantly trying to juggle a huge number of academic and extracurricular commitments. Rather than negotiating late days with students for each assignment (which can be a real time sink AND can possibly result in differential treatment of students), let them manage their time in the way that works best for them.
• Don't just lecture. Actively engage your students in the classroom. Give them short exercises that they can work on with their neighbors. Make them part of their own learning process.
• When you ask the class a question, give students the time to process the question before answering it. Immediate silence doesn't mean no one has an answer. Often it just means they need a moment to think through it.
• Avoid making changes to your syllabus on the fly! It aggravates students and can give them a sense that you're disorganized or not in control of your course. That doesn't mean that you have to be totally rigid. If a particular topic (especially in an elective course) is really capturing the enthusiasm of your students, feel free to linger on it. But don't let it derail exam dates or assignment dates, as students often plan their schedules around these big milestones.
• Get some sleep! Spending all night preparing the "perfect" new lecture or assignment isn't worthwhile if it then makes you walk into class exhausted and more likely to make mistakes. Balance, balance balance!

Zach Dodds, Harvey Mudd College

• It won't work (that is, whatever it is I'm planning), but — in not working — it might provide a chance at a worthwhile shared experience. I should worry less about the former and more about the latter.

Jesse Heines, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." — Plutarch, 46-120
• "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." — Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727, in a letter to Robert Hooke dated February 5, 1675
• "The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil." — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, in The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Edward Emerson (published posthumously in 1904)
• "Those things for which [a college demands] the most money [from a student] are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries, no charge is made." — Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, writing in Walden (published in 1854)
• "The best teacher uses books and appliances as well as his or her own insight, sympathy, and magnetism." — Edward L. Thorndike, 1874-1949, writing in Education (published in 1912)
• "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." — Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948, preeminent leader of Indian independence movement from British rule
• "I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn." — Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, physicist
• "It's a very ancient saying, but a true and honest thought: If you become a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught." — Oscar Hammerstein II, 1895-1960, musician and composer, particularly of scores for Broadway shows
• "The trick to education is to teach people in such a way that they don't realize they're learning until it's too late." — Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton ("Poppa Flash"), 1903-1990, fabled MIT professor and inventor of the stroboscopic flash
• [Learning should be treated] "as an active process of constructing ideas rather than a passive process of absorbing information." — Daniel J. Boorstin, 1914-2004, Librarian of the United States Congress (1975-1987), in From Risk to Renewal: Charting a Course for Reform (p. 117, published in 1993)
• "Science is more than a study of molecules and calculations; it is the love of knowledge and the continued search for the truth. The study of the sciences promotes humility, leaving us with a clear sense that we will never understand all there is to know." — Kenneth H. Olsen, 1926-2011, "The Ultimate Entrepreneur," speaking at the dedication of the Olsen Science Building at Gordon College, September 27, 2008
• "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education." — Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968, Civil Rights Leader
• "I remember my mother telling me: 'Keep stretching your arms for learning. Someday, somebody will ask you to show how long they are, and they won't ask their color.' " — Samuel F. Yette, 1929-2011, journalist, author, and educator who became an influential and sometimes incendiary voice on civil rights
• "To learn, read. To know, write. To master, teach." — Hindu proverb

Colleen Lewis, Harvey Mudd College

• Ask for feedback during class:
  • "Thumbs up if that made sense, thumbs down if that was confusing!"
    • Assume that non-voters found it confusing. You can ask students what about it was confusing and try another explanation or tell them you'll explain it again in the next class.
    • This shows students that you care and the students can help you improve!
  • "Thumbs up if you're ready for me to go over the answer to the in-class practice question, thumbs down if you want more time!"
    • Pacing is really really hard, but you can help students have a voice in pacing!
• Ask for feedback about the homework:
  • "Please post questions about the homework on Piazza."
    • Use Piazza! It allows students to ask questions anonymously, allows students to answer questions, and allows you to keep all of the questions you need to respond to in one place!
    • Update the homework immediately to add clarifications. I like to use google docs so that it is easy for me to add an extra note or comment to a homework assignment.
• Never say "yes" in person.
  • "I'd love to, but I'm sorry I need to think about it. I promised a mentor that I would never say yes in person."
    • There are too many great opportunities! You're going to have to be thoughtful about which requests you say yes to. Try to make "no" the default and only say "yes" when you really want to (or need to).

Brandeis Marshall, Spelman College

• Check out "Let's Talk Teaching" on my blog: http://brandeismarshall.com/.

Bruce Maxwell, Colby College

• My job as a Professor has two important and difficult parts to it.
  • Convincing students they are capable of more than they believe.
  • Convincing students that hard work is worth the effort.
  If I can do those two things, then I've prepared them to learn to educate themselves, because they believe they can learn.
• The advice from others on this page that really resonated with me.
  • Valerie Barr, "You will have to be more patient than you thought possible."
  • Stuart Reges, "You may not realize how much power you have to influence your students with just a few words of encouragement."
  • Mehran Sahami, "It takes real effort to make it look effortless."
  • Stuart Reges, "Solve your own homework."
• Regarding tenure, decide on your own research and teaching goals and then do your best to find an institution whose priorities are a good match. Make tenure about pursuing your own goals, not someone else's.

Darakhshan Mir, Bucknell University

• Gather advice from your colleagues, but feel free to disregard some or all of it :-) (including this!). Resist the pressure to follow a template of success. Identify your own strengths and interests, and find opportunities and places where you can find fulfillment. If you don't do the things you love doing, when you're untenured, it's unlikely you'll get to do them when you're tenured.
• Teaching puts us in a vulnerable situation, especially as a beginning teacher, sometimes putting us outside our zone of comfort . Over time, I have learned (I still struggle with it, though) that embracing this vulnerability rather than pretending it doesn't exist makes me a better teacher and learner, and a role model for my students.
• Respect your students as persons and as learners, while keeping in mind that most of them are much less mature than you. Discounting their opinions can be tempting when you think "you know best", but try to consider situations from different angles — maintain high standards and expectations but nurture an open environment where students can bring their concerns to you.
• Think carefully about active learning exercises before you deploy them in the classroom. Keep experimenting with different ones to see which ones work best for your class, your students and you. Every semester, I'm surprised by what I learn.
• "Steal" teaching and presentation material from around the web, use freely available online resources (such as python tutor) in class to encourage your students to use them as a learning tool on their own.
• For introductory courses, think carefully how best to use the TAs (both institutions I've taught at, are undergraduate only, so I'm referring to undergraduate TAs) to promote and maintain a supportive learning community — they are an incredible resource. Listen to the TAs' feedback, use their opinions to get a feel of how the course is being perceived by students, and adjust accordingly.
• I stole this one from Sam Rebelsky at Grinnell College — use your (introductory) courses as a platform to connect students both to the wider College/University intellectual community and the department, by encouraging them to attend events that are important for their intellectual development.
• Even in introductory courses, bring your scholarship into the classroom, even if in a minor way. Tell them what "else" you do.
• Get to know your colleagues outside your department (this one, especially, if you're at a small school).
• Maintain notes on "highlights" of each class as the semester progresses. Next time you teach this course again, you will know what worked well and what didn't. Don't trust your memory.

Leo Porter, UC San Diego

• In-class - Active Learning:
  • If you can, focus your time on developing in-class activities and questions for students. Students will learn more and you'll enjoy class much more.
  • New to active learning - attend a SIGCSE workshop or two on the topic (POGIL, Peer Instruction, etc.) to find colleagues and get help starting.
• Class Prep:
  • Don't be a perfectionist about slides/activities. 90% polished slides/activities are fine for class. Try to keep mistakes low, but if they occur just now and then, they can be great for student learning when you/they catch them.
  • You don't need amazing/cool animations (buy a tablet and just draw it - it'll slow you down which is good for the students). Class prep is an infinite time sink, be careful.
• Large Class Management: Tools can help make the workload easier.
  • Piazza is great for student questions on homeworks.
  • Gradescope can really help speed up the grading process if you have lots of exams and a large teaching staff.
  • Podcast or Video-podcast if your institution allows/supports it. Students being able to re-listen to your lecture helps reduce the volume of questions.
• Empower your teaching staff:
  • TAs should have a role in writing homeworks, solutions, and exams.
  • If they want (and your school allows it) let them have a few opportunities to teach.
  • Have TAs who are responsible for piazza (and who forward critical questions to you).
  • Everyone benefits from this - they have more to say on the academic market, they are more invested in the class, and it frees your time.
• First year and tenure:
  • Collect advice from a number of people about what tenure looks like at your school (the campus advancement committee or prior members, the dean if you can, a few folks from nearby departments, and a bunch of folks in your department). I recommend doing some of this during the job search but do it again after you arrive (you might hear different things). From this advice, you should find a decent view of what counts, what doesn't, and what's expected.
  • Co-teach your first time if you can. The other professor will know the ropes (how to get copies made, how to access student rosters, etc.) and will also help you see the culture. It'll save you time that first year to get started on scholarship.
  • Be aggressive at the start about scholarship. You're in a new school, new department, etc. but you don't have two years to figure out the lay of the land before starting your grant applications and research program. Aim to have at least one paper (post-phd thesis) and one grant application in submission your first year at the new job.
  • Be firm about keeping service commitments low. A great mentor of mine told me to find something you care about on campus and make it happen (join the existing committee, create your own, or just become the director of a small-scale endeavor). Just make sure it’s not a major commitment - you likely don't have the time yet. But then when folks ask you to serve on the random YYY committee, you can say, "Sorry, I'm busy with <insert the project you joined here>." Saying no is hard in year one, but don't take on more than one committee or new service project. Remember that, depending on your institution, amazing service is almost never a substitute for poor teaching or poor research and prioritize as such.
• Get to know your colleagues and get known:
  • Go to faculty meetings, invite them out for coffee or lunch, and/or go to social events.
  • Find people on campus outside your department with similar interests and try to do things with them periodically. It helps you see the campus-wide picture and they can be a great support network.
  • I know the rule of thumb is to stay quiet, feel things out, then speak up. You should do this - for sure. But I think there's a danger in being too quiet as well. I can't speak for all schools, but my experience has been that even if your view isn't 100% popular, if it is well-defended and rational, then your colleagues will respect you for having a voice.

Mehran Sahami, Stanford University

• A little planning ahead of time can avoid a lot of headache later. When planning assignments and exam questions, make sure you fully solve them all yourself before giving them to students. It’s remarkable how what seems like a simple question can easily end up being much more complicated to solve than you expected or involves needless busywork as part of the solution. Solving everything beforehand (and providing the solutions to your TAs, if applicable, so they can provide clear help to students) avoids lots of downstream problems.
• Engage your students to see if they are understanding the material. Teaching is really a two-way street. It’s important for you to get feedback from students to see if they are really following along with what you are trying to teach them. Just because you say it in a lecture doesn’t mean they understood (or even heard) it. Take time to do engaging examples or demonstrations with the class. Ask them for answers or what might be expected to happen next. Show them something in class and then ask them (discretely) if it made sense.
• It takes real effort to make it look effortless. Good teaching often looks effortless. In fact, it usually starts with a foundation of solid preparation. The first time you teach a class, it’s a ton of work. But if you put in that work up-front you potentially get to leverage it over and over in the future. Also, putting in the time to shake out typos, create engaging demos, and come up with real-world examples of abstract concepts really helps students to better understand what you are trying to teach them.
• It’s okay to say "I don’t know". Teachers often feel pressured that they need to know (or pretend to know) answers to all the questions their students ask. If you don’t know the answer to something or aren’t comfortable coming up with an answer on the fly, it’s okay to say "That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer, off-hand. Let me look into that and we can talk about it next class."
• Be a part of a community. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, engage in appropriate teaching communities (at your institution, with former classmates, at conferences, online, etc.) to leverage the insights and materials that other have found work well for the kinds of topics you are trying to teach.
• Be a good citizen. Part of being a member of a community is also being a good citizen and contributor to that community. That means making the effort to share your insights and work with others as well as getting involved in projects that help the broader community. As a junior faculty member, you should be careful not to "overdo it" on service. But also be aware that some well-selected service involvement can not only help the community, but also broaden your visibility among colleagues outside of your home institution.

From the 2016 New Educators Roundtable

Dave Reed, Creighton University

• Be realistic! With a full teaching load of three courses, I have found that I can be creative and innovative in only one course at a time. In the other courses, I need to rely heavily on past courses or material borrowed from others. Anything beyond this requires Herculean effort. For new faculty who are facing multiple new preparations, realize that you are going to have to rely on colleagues and textbook publishers for help early on.
• If you are teaching a course or topic you don't know particularly well, do what your students do - Google it. There are all kinds of tutorials about virtually every CS topic out there, not to mention many course lectures that you may find useful. Finding a good example for a topic, different from the one in the text book, can be very instructive for you and your students.
• Students really appreciate having all of the course materials (e.g., syllabus, reading and homework assignments, lecture notes) online. This can be done using course management software (e.g., Blackboard, Moodle) or just in a well-organized Web page.
• While students never like "hard" tests, they are much more upset by what they see as "unfair" tests. A test is not the place to surprise your students with new styles of questions that make them think in completely new ways. It is okay to have some "outside of the box" questions, but make sure that there is enough variety in the questions to allow students to show what they know and can do. Posting sample questions that show them the types of questions to expect will help students to prepare and perform to their ability level.
• In intro-level courses, I like to have frequent quizzes to provide feedback to the students on how they are doing (and to encourage them to keep up). Daily quizzes take a lot of class time, however. Instead, I have gone with random quizzes. I have made a Let's Make a Deal style board with two doors - one of which has a card saying QUIZ and the other NO QUIZ. A randomly selected student will pick for the class, and if the QUIZ door is picked, that day's quiz will be taken and graded. If NO QUIZ is picked, the students get the quiz sheet to take home and self-test.
• In large classes, you have got to go with a preset grading rubric and limit the amount of time you spend grading a programming assignment. In smaller classes, it is tempting to spend a lot of time debugging the student's code so you know exactly where they went wrong. This is a serious time sink. I try to set a time limit for each program. If I spend the allotted time on an assignment and still haven't tracked down every bug, I assign a grade based on my overall assessment, and encourage students who think that the assigned grade is too harsh to come to my office and work through the details to convince me.
• Instead of "grace days", I have a uniform policy on late assignments. An assignment can be turned in up to one week late for a 25% penalty. The penalty is harsh enough to encourage students to keep up, but a student who is far from done is given a full week to seek the help he/she needs and complete the work.
• When starting a new job, beware of walking blindly into departmental politics. Try to stay neutral in both personality and pedagogical conflicts until you have a chance to get to know the program, the people, and their motivations.
• Do everything you can to meet faculty members from outside your department. Attend college events and go to seminars in other departments. It is good to get a different perspective on your institution and your department early on. Plus, making colleagues and building an identity for yourself outside of the department will be key when it comes time for tenure.
• Likewise, try to develop colleagues at nearby institutions. They are great resources when you need to teach a new course or just need advice. Attending posted seminars, programming contests, or regional conferences such as CCSC are good ways to make connections.

Jodi Tims, Baldwin Wallace University

• You don't have to test everything you taught your students, grade every detail of everything you assigned your students or have answers to absolutely everything they might ask.
• Students will complain at the moment about being asked to do something they perceive as difficult or a lot of work. They will complain five years later if you haven't challenged them, taught them to think for themselves, or pushed them further than they thought they could go.
• Students need to be given a grade that is an honest reflection of the knowledge, skill and effort that they demonstrated in your course. Receiving a grade that is less than what a student wanted may be temporarily disappointing or anger-invoking, but in the long run, as long as the grade is fair, it will motivate a student to give more in the future courses.
• You are not teaching Greek history. Expect that you will spend the rest of your career being challenged to learn something new or looking like a dinosaur in the eyes of your students if you don't.
• Service to your department, your university and the greater computer science community is important and fulfilling work. Seize the opportunities you have to contribute your time and talents for the betterment of computer science education. But be careful not to let the combination of teaching, professional development and service displace the rest of your life. Time with family and friends, the pursuit of things other than computing that interest you, and taking care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally are critical to doing your best work.
• Opening a student's eyes to the world of computer science research is rewarding work. Many students will enter their university years with absolutely no clue about what "research" is all about. While not all students will have interest in pursuing an advanced degree or a research-oriented career, all can benefit from the innovative thinking and disciplined approach to exploring their ideas that an introduction to research provides. Invest at least some of your time, even if you spend your career at a teaching-oriented institution, in mentoring students in undergraduate research.

Steve Wolfman, University of British Columbia

• Time spent reflecting on your teaching and writing about it has a huge "return on investment", even though it feels like a waste of time you cannot possibly afford at the moment you do it.
• At least if you teach big classes, be more organized and punctual than you can possibly imagine everyone else being, even if that's entirely contrary to your nature. (E.g., I make — and post in advance — detailed staff meeting agendas every week for the 22 TAs in my two courses this term.)

Resources recommended during the workshop

• Advice for new Faculty Members, Robert Boyce, Pearson, 2000.
• What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain, Harvard Press, 2004.
• EOAS Science Education Initiative: Two-Stage Exams, University of British Columbia, 3/6/2016.

From the 2014 New Educators Roundtable

Josh Hug, Princeton University

• While the assignment from last semester may sure seem like it needs an API overhaul a couple of days before it's released, resist the temptation to do this. It'll be fine.
• When you join a university, make friends outside your department. You can learn a lot about teaching from people from completely different backgrounds.
• Focus your efforts where you can get the most impact.
• Don't answer every Piazza question at the beginning of the semester. TAs will fall out of the habit.
• Don't be afraid to tell students you can't help them with their individual issue. Try to refer them to someone else.
• When designing/teaching sections, work to ensure that every student is actively thinking about the material for as much time as possible.
• For problem-solving based sections or labs, teach your TAs to be proactive. It is absolutely vital that they insinuate themselves into the learning process instead of letting students come to them.
• Find a way to identify struggling students in the first two weeks. Reach out to them individually (either yourself or via your staff). If they're on the path to failure, tell them then!
• If you're me, start prepping for lecture later. If I start prepping for lecture at noon, I'll work on it until I go to sleep to the detriment of everything else. This is usually a poor usage of time.
• Give a small incentive for answering surveys (e.g. a dropped exercise or an extra point on the lowest exercise). I found survey participation increases from ~30% to >85%. And if students tell you something in your class isn't working, don't be afraid to abandon it.

From the 2011 New Educators Roundtable

Valerie Barr, Union College

• Hand out large index cards on the first day that students make into name cards for their desk. Have them bring them to class every day until you learn their names.
• Before you make an exam, make a list of what knowledge and skills you are testing. Then make problems that test those items. Make sure that there is a mix of difficulties, some problems that are straightforward repeats of things done already, some problems that demonstrate ability to apply knowledge. Do the exam yourself, and have at least one colleague read it over.
• Don't be afraid of silence in the room when you ask a question.
• Listen to the tone of your voice. Don't be patronizing, no matter how hard it is to believe that a student doesn't understand something. And sarcasm does not work in the classroom!
• It can be very effective to have students answer each other's questions. But it can also be very effective to have students restate the question!
• Keep track of who speaks up, who asks and answers questions. Develop mechanisms for making sure that everyone gets called on at some point, and announce these in class. Quiet students often need to know in advance that it's going to be their turn. If you are walking code, go around the room and have each student say what happens next. They need to hear their own voice in the room in order to become comfortable speaking up.
• Get groups working up at the board together! This is great, even better than pair programming (though only effective if the class is small enough for them to all get board space at once).
• Do all the assignments and projects in advance, before assigning them.
• If you "borrow" projects or assignments from colleagues, make sure all the software runs appropriately on your system before you have the students start working on it.
• You will have to be more patient than you thought possible.
• There's nothing quite like the AHA moment, especially when it comes in the middle of class and everyone realizes that someone just got it!

Susan Haller, State University of New York at Potsdam

• Everything that everyone else has mentioned.
• Be punctual and organized. They will do what you do.
• Take time to use the board now and then. If it is a big class, the board on a tablet PC works. It slows down the pace, and gives students a chance to follow what is going on.
• Pick your battles. The students are not going to be perfect. Decide what outcomes are most important in your course. Focus on those.
• Reinforce thinking in class. Even if they are on the wrong track, take the time (sometimes) to work through their bad reasoning until they see what their own problem is.
• Remind them that it is fine to make mistakes, big mistakes that consume lots of time. It is a valuable form of learning.

Stuart Reges, University of Washington

• Solve your own homework
  • Until someone writes a solution to the homework, you don't know whether the level of difficulty is right or that it even can be solved with the techniques you have taught them
  • Even if someone else has solved the problem, it is important for you to solve it so that you can get into the right mindset to teach the material leading up to the assignment and to make sure the writeup gives appropriate guidance
• Encourage your best students
  • You may not realize how much power you have to influence your students with just a few words of encouragement
  • We often devote an inordinate amount of our time to our worst students, so it's important to make time for the best
  • Personal encouragement is best, but even mass emails can be effective (e.g., "Your grade in this class indicates to me that you have a talent for computer science and would do well in the major...I would be happy to talk to you about this")
• Partner with talented undergrads
  • Undergrads are an underutilized resource
  • Ownership is key: a partner with significant responsibility, not a worker who takes orders
  • Undergrad-TA program at Stanford, Arizona, Washington:
    • TAs teach section, grade, serve as on-duty helper in the lab
    • Undergrads coordinate the program, including selection and training of new TAs
    • emphasis on community, teaching
• Range of questions on exams
  • Have a range of difficulty in your exam questions:
    • Some simple, mechanical, confidence building questions
    • Some medium questions that require nontrivial problem solving
    • at least one challenging question to distinguish at the high end
  • My cs1 midterm:
    • 60 points mechanical
    • 30 points problem solving
    • 10 points "super hard"
• "Program Mystery" questions
  • Computer scientists are good at simulating the execution of arbitrary bits of code (algorithmic thinking)
  • We should encourage this in all of our students by asking "What does the following code do?"
    • Effect of b = (b == false) for boolean b?
  • Use it for: expressions, parameters, if/else, loops, arrays, recursion, inheritance
• Distribute sample exams
  • Best way to prepare your students for exams
  • Use old exams as your source
  • Show them exactly what structure you have planned
  • Reduces test anxiety while allowing you to still ask hard questions
  • Leads to extra learning because you've told them exactly what to study
  • Pass it out a week before the test, distribute a key in the lecture before the test
  • Second sample exam/key in section
• Section participation score
  • As an incentive to attend section, have a participation score equal in weight to a weekly programming assignment
  • Make it fairly easy to get 100%, even if you miss some sections
  • I give 3 points per section up to 20 (full credit for attending 7 of 10)
  • Especially helpful in cs1 for nervous students
• Problem/Key handouts
  • Give your TAs two handouts to copy each week: problems and a key
  • Recycle old exam questions into section handouts
  • Overload the handout so students have lots of practice problems to do on their own (do only a few in section)
  • Don't post section handouts on the web (encourage them to go to section)
• Adjust exam scores
  • Even experienced instructors badly misjudge exam difficulty and give “killer” exams
  • This can be devastating to some students (especially women) and can poison the classroom atmosphere
  • If your exam is too hard, add points to everyone's score right away
  • Students will forgive anything if you're honest and willing to admit a mistake
  • To adjust I aim for a midterm median of 80, a final median of 75, at least 20% A's
• Offer an Honors Section
  • Meet weekly with honors students (and others with high grades)
  • Most important thing is interaction with you (seeing a real computer scientist up close)
  • Second most important is interaction with each other (they're your smartest students)
  • Read a book with them (e.g., Battelle's The Search)
  • Discuss whatever you find fun: Rubik's cube, Qubic, meta, memes, infinity, liar's paradox, RSA encryption, halting problem

Julie Zelenski, Stanford University

• Ask students to email you a self photo and save them. You can review them to learn names and use them to match names to faces later when you get rec letter requests and so on.
• I'm a big fan of late days — give students a "free" number of small self-granted extensions. This conserves your time/energy by avoiding the small stuff. You only get involved on serious issues.
• Make notes to yourself post-mortem (how that lecture went, what students had trouble with on this assignment, what curve was produced by an exam problem) at the time when your memory is fresh. Then be sure to put that information where you will see it the next time you give a similar lecture/assignment/exam — I tend to add it to the top of the document itself (my lecture slides, the assignment handout, etc.) in a stand-out font/color so I can't miss it.
• For me, it is near impossible to write an exam that is too easy and conversely quite easy to make it too hard. Even if you adjust points to "fix" after the fact, the too difficult exam still has many harmful consequences on student motivation and self-esteem. So I work to be mindful when creating exams, knowing my own tendencies are to err on difficulty. Starting from the learning goals and rubric tends to help keep me focused on making sure I'm testing exactly what I intend and getting the evaluation data I need while avoiding noise such as effects from time pressure, non-native language, and so on.
• Stanford has an excellent "Center for Teaching and Learning" , your school may have something similar, look into it. Our center helps with TA training, regularly bring interesting speakers to campus, arrange for workshops and discussions on educational issues, and so on. They also provide one-on-one consultation where they observe in your class and offer feedback and advice.

From the 2010 New Educators Roundtable

Mark Stehlik, Carnegie Mellon University

• Teaching takes time!
  • Prep time - I used to write out all my lectures in advance to help plan the flow.
  • Office hour time - if you're not knee-deep in office hours, you're probably not aiming high enough!
  • Check time - make sure you or, if you are fortunate enough to have them, your TA's write solutions to assignments and exams in advance. A good rule of thumb is a factor of 3 or 4 (i.e., if it takes you 2 hours to write the solution, it will take them 6-8).
• Be enthusiastic
  • This is not a personality issue, though it sounds like it is - regardless of how enthusiastic you are, you can always demonstrate enthusiasm for the material. Put another way, if you're not excited about what you're teaching, why should your students be?
• Get to know your students!
  • Of course, the best way is to take roll early and often, but this can also be accomplished with quiz/assignment handbacks. This is hard in large lectures, but even there, one can at least familiarize oneself with the students who come regularly to office hours.
• Be flexible! Across multiple dimensions:
  • Yours is not the only course they have, so be prepared to alter a due date or exam date so as to not overwhelm everyone with N things in a day. We've had sophomore courses that students take concurrently have due dates fall on the same day of the week - that's guaranteed to result in problems.
  • A particular lesson might not work - be prepared to re-do a topic if the students haven't picked it up, or to jettison a thread that isn't working. And if something doesn't work, try to figure out why - was it you/them/the weather?
  • A particular exam question (or exam!) might not work - be prepared to normalize if necessary
• But hold the bar high and make sure you're pushing all the students
  • Have bonus questions on assignments to challenge the high achievers, and support the bottom-end with office hours to get them over the bar
• Exams...
  • Exams in a course serve two fundamental purposes: (1) to indirectly measure a student's mastery of course material in order to determine a grade, and (2) to provide feedback to both students and the course instructor concerning what material has been mastered (well taught) or not mastered (poorly taught). It is often easy to focus on the first objective and ignore the second. The second, though, is the more important objective. If you design your exams to provide excellent feedback, they should also provide a solid basis for determining final grades.
  • Each problem or subproblem should test one concept or skill which was to be learned in the course (with the exception of synthesis questions). Testing different concepts or skills in different problems or subproblems maximizes feedback.
  • Try to decouple subparts of a problem. This facilitates grading and is fairer to the student who may miss one part and otherwise give up on the rest of the problem.
  • Only exceptional students can be expected to solve a "novel" problem under exam conditions.
  • State the problem as clearly as possible and proofread your questions carefully, not only for typographical errors, but also for ambiguous problem statements. This is especially important for exams! If possible, have a colleague review the questions and provide pre-exam feedback.
• Some ideas on assignments
  • It should be possible for students to be successful on some part of the assignment, which augurs against large, amorphous assignments.
  • Set explicit milestones (even virtual, self-check ones) for large assignments given over a period of weeks to make sure students are making progress
  • Know What You're Asking For - make sure you have a clear picture of the concepts and skills which the student is demonstrating by completing the assignment.
  • Clear, Unambiguous - ideally, no assignment would need clarifications. The more people who see it prior to release, the less likely clarifications will be needed. Be attentive to bboards and mail shortly after the release of an assignment!
  • Require Minimal Unrelated Knowledge - a student shouldn't need to know how to play bridge or some other random thing (or have to learn in real-time) in order to do the assignment.
  • Interesting! - perhaps more important than anything else. More than anything else, students detest boring assignments (either contextually boring or an assignment which deals with minutiae rather than an important part of the course).
• Solicit feedback
  • An early in the semester index card (first couple weeks, perhaps) with two questions on the order of
    • What was the best thing that happened in class this week?
    • What one thing should I do differently?
    can go a long way toward heading problems off at the pass.
• You're not alone
  • if you're struggling to come up with an assignment, or how to present a topic, ask a colleague (either local or on the SIGCSE or other list) - of course, you can't do this for everything, but we've all got a few go-to people when we need an answer to a question; also check out the Nifty Assignments page for ideas.

Eugene Wallingford, University of Northern Iowa

• Be honest. Students value honesty.
• Even the best students will fall down occasionally. There isn't anything wrong with them, or you.
• Give feedback on assignments promptly.
• The previous advice is a specific example of something more general: Most students don't handle uncertainty well. Even students who "get it" might think they do not.
• Setting draconian standards and policies does more harm to your learning environment than it buys you.
• Instead, set reasonable, firm, and challenging standards. Students appreciate that they are expected to accomplish something meaningful.
• A lecture or classroom activity is only as good as what it helps your students do.

From the 2009 New Teaching Faculty Roundtable

Claire Bono, University of Southern California

• (Curriculum) There's that saying "teach the students you have, not the ones you wished you had." I still struggle with this sometimes.
• (Curriculum) Keep notes about what worked and what didn't that semester (e.g., changes needed to an assignment, a new lecture topic you want to add) in one document (I just use a text file); update it as you think of things throughout the semester so you won't forget. Then refer to it the following semester as you go along in the same course. You can also keep notes with your lecture notes for that day, for when you go to review them next time.
• (Exams) Keep ideas for exam problems in one document (I just use a text file), and write them down as you think of them, and then look through it as you are making up the exam.
• (Exams) Publish previous exams. You don't have to worry about students getting illicit copies themselves. Lets them know the style of your exams for better studying. I provide solutions for some of the exams.
• (Policies) If you want students to do something you have to make it worth some course credit (doesn't apply to 100% of students). E.g., I would like the labs to be worth nothing, because I want them to be a low-pressure activity; they aren't really a means for evaluation, just learning. But I make them worth 10% total so they will do them (there are some slop points too to reduce the pressure).
• (Policies) A policy of no make-up exams has worked well for me. The policy is that if a student is very sick or whatever, I'll scale their scores on their other exams. I don't have a lot of students missing exams, and don't have to put in effort making up extra exams.
• (Labs) Do lab assignments for beginning (CS I / CS II) programming courses. It gets them programming right away, and often, and focusing on practicing the current topic with help readily available. Other useful lab activities (besides programming): trying out software development tools (e.g., give them a program to debug, and have them show results in the symbolic debugger), timing programs using different algorithms to solve the same problem, demonstrating their working milestone for the current programming assignment, presenting their design proposal for current programming assignment.
• (Assignments) Nifty assignments has been a great resource for me.

Dan Garcia, University of California, Berkeley

Here are 10 I talked about at the Teaching Tips We Wish They'd Told Us Before We Started (Panel) at SIGCSE 2007.

1. (Policies) Slip days
   • The tired "my dog ate my homework?" excuse probably isn't used much anymore, but I've certainly heard my share of "the network / system / RAID / database was down". These are a thing of the past, thanks to slip days. Slip days are one-day virtual tokens (students are usually given three at the start of a term) that can be used to grant themselves a single day's extension for any homework or project deadline. They could have a single day's extension for three assignments, save them up to use all three at once, or anything in-between. Our submission script automatically keeps track of how many slip days they've used to date, so there's no extra bookkeeping overhead. Whenever someone approaches with a sob story when they're clearly fishing for an extension, one can cut them off and suggest they use a slip day token.
2. (Office Hours) TALC
   • The Astronomy Learning Center (TALC) on campus runs large, collaborative "watering holes" where students gather to work on their homework in an informal, open setting. While I did not duplicate their very successful center, I did adopt some of their strategies for my own office hours. The most significant was to let the students drive as much as possible. It's so easy to lapse into lecturer mode when a student asks an innocent question, like "I don't understand ____". TALC suggests biting your tongue, avoiding the chalk, and instead spending your efforts supporting the inner teacher in the other students. You act more as a facilitator between the confused student and their "peer instructors". Once one student has explained the answer, you ask a second student to give an "instant replay" for the benefit of all. You are allowed to step in for a "slow motion instant replay" when appropriate, but only as a last resort. There are other subtle points TALC mentions, like standing within a group (not in front), avoiding getting bogged down with a single question or individual, and having the "driver" recap whenever a student joins in the middle of a discussion. One role I sometimes assume is that of a very confused student. I'll sit in the back and ask very fundamental questions and all the students in the room act as a single entity to explain things to me.
3. (Lectures) Team-teach (faculty and TAs)
   • Rather than having a single person teaching every lecture/section, if two can attend each other's sections, have them trade off alternate weeks.
   • The week they are "ON", they'd teach all lectures/sections.
   • The "OFF" person attends the first section, and sits in the back as observer, taking notes of how well the "ON" TA did that week, and debrief immediately afterward
   • TAs Buddy TA in weeks 2 through n-1 (not first and last)
4. (Grading) Englighted grading
   • Absolute grading, bump up but never down
   • Allow the final exam to replace the grade from earlier midterms
5. (Cheating) Cheaters? Think movies!
   • "bring in the cavalry"
     • when confronting them, have really good evidence (high cheating bar) and have several TAs in the room at once. No he-said, he-said.
   • "we can do this the easy way, or the hard way" (i.e. plea bargaining)
     • Provide a lenient option if they confess, keep it internal, write the letter to the office of student judicial affairs saying it's resolved, and minimize the effect (perhaps just neg pts for that project).
     • If they don't confess and the SJA determines they're guilty, throw the book at them (fail the class)
     • Remind them that if it goes to SJA, they often call parents in. To many, this is the fact that breaks a case open.
6. (Lecturing) Use PRS/CPS clickers in lecture
7. (Exams) Bring laptop to exams
   • Visible Timer. I use HBTimer 1.5.1
   • Powerpoint bug fixes (and then fix immediately!)
   • Auto-announce 30-min left, etc. Here's my script I run at all 3-hour evening exams (substitute your own mp3 files): #!/bin/sh mpg123 ./prologue.mp3 echo 'say "You may begin. You have three hours. Good skill!"' | /usr/bin/osascript sleep 3600 #3600 = 1 hour echo 'say "Sorry for the interruption... You have two hours left!"' | /usr/bin/osascript sleep 3600 #3600 = 1 hour echo 'say "Sorry for the interruption... You have one hour left!"' | /usr/bin/osascript sleep 1800 #1800 = 30 min echo 'say "Sorry for the interruption... You have thirty minutes left!"' | /usr/bin/osascript sleep 1500 #1500 = 25 min echo 'say "Sorry for the interruption... You have five minutes left! At this point, please remain in your seats. Make sure your name is on every payj and you have signed the front."' | /usr/bin/osascript sleep 240 #240 = 4 min echo 'say "You have one minute left..."' | /usr/bin/osascript sleep 60 # 60 = 1 min echo 'say "Time is up!! Please put down your pencils and remain in your seats."' | /usr/bin/osascript mpg123 ./epilogue.mp3
8. (Lecturing) Consider web technology (webcasting, podcasting), audio only
   • "The current flows from 'here' to 'here'" is useless if audio only (or for visually impaired students)!
   • (student asks un-miked question) "Yes" is useless! Repeat question!
9. (Lecturing) Share your CS passion
   • I try to show animations from SIGGRAPH's ET before every lecture
10. (Staff) Empower TAs, support readers
    • Ask TAs teach a lecture
    • Have TAs and readers help write, beta-test, grade exams
    • Let TAs participate in syllabus discussions
    • Open your life to your TAs
      • Share cell numbers (great for emergencies)
      • Grade an exam at your home
11. (Professional Growth and Development) Read "How Children Fail" by Holt. Again.
    • Insights of a great teacher that have stood the test of time. The most important idea: Let the students drive their learning!
12. (Policies) A big class is like the Queen Victoria...
    • (in which making a right turn takes 50 miles) If you change a policy, it'll be months before the entire class knows the change, if ever.

David G. Kay, University of California, Irvine

• (Meta) Teaching is a design activity; there are almost always tradeoffs. There are many tips/techniques/approaches, each with strengths and weaknesses. You should build a large repertoire of alternatives and the ability to choose the right one for a given situation. It's not either "Always enforce due dates strictly" or "Always give deserving students leeway"; it depends on why you have the due date in the first place (fairness, pacing, grader convenience), the size and level of the course, the size and duration of the assignment, and more.
• (Mentoring Students) Be a model of professional behavior, even if your students flake out or tick you off; they may not have that much experience seeing how professional people behave. (Professional doesn't have to mean stiff, stilted, or stand-offish; it does mean being forthright, reliable, and focused on getting the job done.) Treat students with respect (even if they talk in class, play World of Warcraft, dress outlandishly). Students aren't your customers (they're not always right), but they are your clients in the professional sense: You should do your best to serve their needs, but you (like their doctor or lawyer) have an independent professional obligation to do what you think is best, not to just give them what they want (not to prescribe the marijuana in every case, not to give them As when their code doesn't work).
• (Exams) On the way back to your office after every lecture, think of one exam question you could ask about what you just taught. Your memory will only fade over time.
• (Lectures) If you're projecting anything, let students have a copy of the same thing on paper while you're projecting it. Otherwise, they'll concentrate on transcribing the screen (even if you tell them not to) and not listen to you.
• (Evaluations) Use mid-term course evaluations. It shows students you care, which will motivate them to work harder. The form doesn't matter; you could be as minimal as, "How can I improve this course?" If people have something to say, they'll say it. But they're unlikely to be nasty, since they have to live with you for the rest of the term. Then address the most common comments in class (without sounding defensive) and invite anyone with a concern you didn't address in class to come chat with you about it. (You don't want to use class time to go through every individual grievance.)
• (Professional Growth) Visit your colleagues' classes, and invite them to visit yours. It sounds strange, but teaching is one of the most isolated academic activities (not from the students, obviously, but from one's colleagues, who typically have no idea what you do in your class). Have coffee afterwards and talk about what you saw.
• (Labs) Practice pair programming. It's a winning strategy all the way around, and one of the most thoroughly studied pedagogical practices.
• (Retention, promotion) Know who will be evaluating your performance and retaining/promoting you. You want them to be as comfortable with you as possible. Be around; volunteer to do things; behave in ways compatible with how the decision-makers behave.
• (Professional Growth) Never throw anything away that you have created: notes, slides, software, exams, whatever. You never know when, decades later, you might find yourself teaching the same or similar topics. You also never know when you might need to change jobs, and you'll want to be able to show samples of your work.
• (Office Hours) Don't touch the pen (chalk, marker) during office hours; put it in the student's hand. If you do, you'll be tempted just to work through the problem in lecture mode. Instead, let the student write.
• (Mentoring Students) Help students make the transition from high school to college. It's not just more school; the whole ballgame is different. See http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kay/college.html .

Lester McCann, University of Arizona

• (Lecture) facial expression for "bored" == facial expression for "lost"
• (Time Management) athletes are expected to give 110%; faculty are expected to give 125+%
• (Tenure) the politics of the tenure process