The spiritual food for teaching assistants: student feedback

Because of the low salary, PhD students usually need other income source. One of the extra income is to work as a teaching assistant (TA). When I first started working with Professor Liu, there were many students in the lab. Apart from Muhammad, who received government subsidies, the rest Taiwanese students like myself needed TA positions to support our lowly lives. The first choice for a TA was always Professor Liu’s courses.

Professor Liu taught several courses and was one of the few instructors who took teaching seriously. For most professors, teaching was an obligation and an annoyance. They would rather avoid it and focus solely on research. However, Professor Liu was passionate about teaching. He wrote his own textbooks and taught with enthusiasm. He never complained about the inconvenience of teaching, although he did occasionally express frustration about students’ poor performance on exams.

Being a TA for Professor Liu was relatively easy because his classes had fewer students. There was even a time when there weren’t enough students to justify for TA positions, so Professor Liu asked us to spread the word and promote his courses. The low student enrollment was due to the fact that Professor Liu’s classes were mostly for graduate students with challenging topics. Additionally, optics wasn’t a mainstream field in the electrical engineering department. While courses like integrated circuits were always packed, classes on antennas, waveguides, lasers, and optical components have 10 students at best. If I have to describe what it is like in Liu’s class, it would be the professor giving a story time at the front, and the five or six students would gather around like a cozy family. After a semester, my students felt like distant relatives who had just shared a warm meal together.

The night before the experiment I would write the blackboard beforehand

Sometimes when the professor didn’t offer a course or when the lab had too many people, we had to find other classes to work as TAs. As a result, I’ve also been a TA for freshman and sophomore electronic experiments, as well as for first-year physics lab. These freshmen brats are de facto our second parents supporting us financially. Freshman courses were ten times more exhausting than Professor Liu’s classes. Not only were there more students, but the experiments were taught by us not the professor. It felt more like being a lecturer than a TA.

Preparing for these classes was quite cumbersome. For Professor Liu’s courses, I would review where he left off and refresh my memory before teaching. Physics lab was a different story, especially experiments I had no recollection I had learned it before. Before each lab session, I had to do the experiments as a practice round to understand potential difficulties, hazards, and the techniques to achieve the highest successful rate. I also had to anticipate questions students might ask and understand the reasons behind any experimental errors. Additionally, for the first lab session of the semester, I needed to check for missing equipment or any damaged items. If it was the last lab session of the day, I had to take inventory and report any damages. Towards the end of the semester, there were several weeks dedicated to team projects. During this time, I had to make sure all their projects: circuit boards and electronics, were returned after each class, and made sure I was not the one to be blamed if any of the returned stuff was broken or damaged.

Salary provides us food, and the feedback given by students are spiritual food

Salary provides us food, and the feedback given by students are spiritual food. When I went to the Department of Physics to teach experiments, knowing that I was not born in physics, I was afraid that I would not be as good as the TAs in the Department of Physics. So in addition to the aforementioned work before the experimental class, I would also go to the laboratory the night before to write the blackboard in order to quickly clarify the purpose and concept of the experiment before the experiment. As I found out later in the student feedback at the end of the semester, students privately called this blackboard teaching a ‘mini lecture’: ‘Danny’s explanations are always well-prepared and very clear, … I was never confused about the content of the experiment. His mini-lectures at the beginning of each lab were very comprehensive and informative. I appreciate that Danny was willing to help us when we needed it and he explained the experiment rather than just telling us what to do.’ I later learned that this kind of mini-lecture is something that physics TAs almost never do. Seeing that students take my teaching to heart, I feel all my hard works are paid off. Another student wrote: ‘Danny is the best physics lab TA I have ever met. He explained these concepts well and did a great job of integrating the experiments we did in the section with the ideas and concepts we learned in the lecture.’ I then realized that my preparation for the course far exceeded that of other TAs. ‘It seems that someone finally heard my evaluation of the physics TA last semester. Although the course is still not perfect, it has made great progress compared to last semester. Danny is very knowledgeable about these materials and strives to ensure that students not only understand the current experiment, but also understand the concepts related to the experiment and the history behind the concepts. Danny did not teach verbatim according to the laboratory manual, but presented the material in a more understandable and straightforward way.’ It seems that this student misunderstood. The school did not hear your opinion, it just happened that I was a diligent and good TA from outside the physics department this semester. But why are the TAs in the Department of Physics particularly bad? It turns out that the graduate students in the Department of Physics are not teaching for the salary; the Department of Physics stipulates that they must be a TA once, learn how to teach before they can graduate. Therefore, they don't really have motivation to be good TAs. Unlike the TAs in the Department of Physics, those who come from outside like me are usually very hardworking and hope to have good student feedback, so that they can come back to teach in the future. The teaching quality of the Department of Physics seems to reflect the defects of this system. It was originally a good intention, hoping that every physics graduate student could have some teaching experience before graduation. However, it also creates a non-competitive environment, leaving TA little motivation to be good teachers, and the student feedback becomes a formality that has little effect on physics TA.