First Class with the Students

Welcome to this blog. This blog will contain my regular experiences with my students in the CIS3023 class. This semester I have been appointed as a teaching TA for CIS 3023 (Programming for CIS major II). The main objective of this course is to teach the concept of object oriented programming using a popular object oriented language Java. The leading instructor is Jeff DePree, another PhD student in this department. I am taking the lab session for two periods on Thursday 5th and 6th period.

15th May was the first lab session. I was a bit tensed as this was my first class ever taken as a teaching TA. What's even worse, the topic was a new one for me. On Monday Jeff told me to take a practical session to demonstrate how a UML tool can be used for modeling a project.
I didn't know anything about the UML that moment. In just three days I read some materials and prepared myself. Only Linux machines were available in the lab E116. So I had to find one UML tool that could work on Linux. The bad part of the thing is that I didn't have admin access to the lab machine. So it was not possible to install an rpm package. Ultimately I selected two tools for Linux, ArgoUML and Umbrello. Umbrello was simpler to use.

On the 15th May I reached the lab around 1:30 pm. The class was about to start around 2pm. Gradually students were coming. There were around 22 students. I didn't count. Three male students were aged, two of them are doing post graduate, one in Physics and another is Digital Arts and Science. There were four Indian students, one girl and three guys.

I wrote my big name on the board and also wrote the small one (Neo). They were laughing. They introduced themselves one by one. It was really difficult to remember all the names.

The bad part of the lecture is that I didn't prepare any powerpoint slides for the lecture. I was writing on the board which was on one corner of the classroom and might not be completely visiblt from every corner of the class. I was explaining features of UML part by part by using the board and then coming to a desktop (connected to the projector) to demonstrate how to use that feature using Umbrello. The Indian students were questioning, I don't know whether the others had problem with my pronunciation at all because they didn't ask many questions.

The software were behaving erratically and it was crashing frequently. Those moments were embarrassing :).

The class was quite long due to a summer period. Unfortunately most of the students, specifically the girls didn't have a previous programming experience. So it was really difficult for them to understand the basic concepts of UML like activity diagram, class diagram at first shot. Some of them were not paying attention to my lecture. I have heard some yawns and sighs at the later part of the class. The Indian girl was sleeping at the end :O.

Anyway the class was finished at 2:15pm, I was relieved.

I am waiting for the second class. This time I am supposed to teach on Exceptions in Java. I shall be prepared ( this is a known topic for me) with ppt slides. Hope for the best :).