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How big will my classes be, and what is the role of teaching assistants?
Class size can vary greatly, from eight to over 400 students. The
introductory courses are normally quite large. In these classes, the
general format is for a senior professor to present two or three
lectures a week to the entire group of students. The students are then
divided into groups of about 20 students, called discussion sections,
under the direction of TAs (teaching assistants, usually graduate
students). The purpose of discussion sections is to allow TAs to
explain lecture material more thoroughly, to answer students'
questions about the lectures or homework, and (for math and science
courses) to do example problems. If a laboratory is included in the
course, the TA will also supervise lab exercises. Engineering classes
are generally much smaller than introductory courses. Larger
departments, such as Electrical Engineering, may have classes of 40-50
students, while small departments, like Material Science and
Engineering, may have classes of fewer than 10 students. Teaching
assistants are normally not used as often in engineering courses as
they are in introductory courses.
A related issue is the concern over international TAs and their
ability to teach effectively. In a 1990 study, UW-Madison
undergraduates taught by teaching assistants whose native language was
not English got slightly better grades than those taught by native
speakers of English. The finding contradicts critics of the university
who say that education at UW-Madison suffers because of international
TAs. Timothy Norris, a co-investigator in the study states, "What this
indicates to us is that, with respect to student grades, the quality
of instruction provided by non-native English speaking TAs is as high
as that provided by their native English-speaking counterparts." For
the past five years, the college has required teaching training every
semester for engineering TAs. The program has improved both the
evaluations of TAs and TAs' satisfaction with their jobs.
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