I was a lab teaching assistant at the Department of Physics at Western Michigan University. I taught two classes of PHYS 2060 lab in the 2017 Fall semester and three classes of the same course in the 2018 Spring semester.

The Brief Description of PHYS 2060 Lab

The PHYS 2060 lab is an introductory physics lab designed to deepen the understanding of the students on Mechanics. Mechanics is the branch of physics which studies motion. In this lab, students learn a variety of physics concepts, such as velocity, projectile motion, force, momentum, the moment of inertia, kinetic energy, potential energy, rotational motion, and so on, by conducting some experiments and simulations. The maximum capacity of this lab is 24 students, which are divided into eight groups of three students. In every lab session, each student has to choose one of the following roles: lead author (LA), principle experimenter (PE), and computer operator (CO). A lead author is responsible for writing the lab group report. A principle experimenter strives to ensure the experiments are done based on the lab manual. A computer operator makes graphs and conducts a linear regression analysis on Microsoft Excell. Sometimes a CO also runs the simulation using a physics software names PASCO. When a student takes a role as either an LA or CO, he or she will earn three extra points. A student is eligible to take a role as an LA and CO maximum three times (total 18 extra points). Before coming to the class, students have to finish their pre-lab exercise, which aims to ensure the students aware of the experiment they are going to perform in the class. They will submit their pre-lab exercise sheets at the beginning of the lab. In the lab, students conduct the experiments and simulations and answer all questions on the lab manual. They can ask a lab teaching assistant for guidance if they get stuck. At the end of the lab, they submit their lab group reports to their lab teaching assistant.

My Role as a Teaching Assistant of PHYS 2060 Lab

As a lab teaching assistant, I do the lab preparation on Friday before coming to the class. On the lab preparation, I check the lab equipment provided for each group and run the entire experiment to gain some information about the potential pitfalls and how to handle them. On the day, I come five or ten minutes earlier to the lab to open the door for my students. I bring the attendance list and the list of the number of LA and CO roles each student had taken from the previous lab sessions. I give a brief introduction about the experiments and simulations the students are going to perform. I supervise the students while they are doing their experiments and simulations by continuously walking around to make sure the experiments and simulations run well and guiding the students if they get stuck. At the end of the lab, I return the previous graded lab group reports to the students and collect the current ones. I grade each lab group report and pre-lab exercise sheet using a rubric with a maximum point of twenty. Unfortunately, I cannot provide any teaching materials here since the syllabus, lab procedures, lab manual, and rubric are owned by the Department of Physics at Western Michigan University. I do not make my own teaching materials as a lab teaching assistant.