Question 1: During the class, there are
two students at the back talking to each other and their voice becomes louder and louder.
What would you do?
Do nothing, just continue your activity.
Increase your voice gradually and walk close to the two students.
Halt the activity and wait for the students to stop talking.
Warn the two students that you will ask them to leave the classroom if
they continue to talk.
Question 2: After the class, one
student told you that you taught too fast in the class. What would you do in next meeting?
Do nothing, keep your speed of teaching
Ask the students to prepare before coming to the next class.
Slow down your speed of teaching and re-organize your main points.
Informally ask some other students for their feeling about your speed of
teaching.
Question 3: In a laboratory session, a
group has gone through a wrong experimental procedure and thus resulted in nothing. The
students asked you why. What would you do?
Repeat the experiment in the right procedure & show them
Do not give any assistance to them and ask them to explain their
experimental result in the lab report.
Ask them to repeat the experiment once more.
Give them hints and help them figure out what has gone wrong. You then
guide them to finish the experiment.
Question 4: You are a TA of a tutorial
class. You found 5 pieces of plagiarized writing in a written assignment. What would you
do?
Punish the students according to the penalty guidelines you set at the
first class.
Inform instructor and let him take care of this incident.
Give warnings to students and tell them you will punish them if they
plagiarize again.
Pretend you do not know this has happened to avoid trouble.
Question 5: In response to
questions/queries in a tutorial, you found that you were not prepared for that question.
What would you do?
Defer an explanation to a later time and follow up after you have
researched the question.
Apologize for your inexperience or lack of expertise in teaching.
Tell the student you don’t know the answer and tell him/her to ask
the course instructor directly.
Drag on an irrelevant subject, hoping that the students forget the
question they have raised.
Question 6: Your instructor asked you
to invigilate in a quiz while he had to attend a seminar in another room. During the quiz
you found that a few students cheat. What would you do first?
Inform the students that you propose to assign zero mark for the quiz as
stipulated earlier. If they do not agree with your proposal, your instructor might file
formal charges of penalty or permanent record.
Stop them cheat immediately without stopping the quiz. Add remarks on
their answer books that will alert your instructor when he grades the quiz.
Stop them doing the quiz immediately without disturbing others. Collect
their answer books, inform your instructor as soon as possible and let him deal with the
case.
Stop the quiz immediately and ask permission of your instructor to
reschedule the quiz with the presence of your instructor.
Question 7: In Lecture Theatre B, you
are presenting with the overhead projector. Suddenly, the bulb blows out and you cannot
use it any more. What would you do then?
Use another overhead projector.
Phone ITSC immediately.
Write on the whiteboard.
Use visualizer.
Question 8: While leading a group
discussion on a topic the instructor taught in last lecture, you find the students are
exceptionally quiet, without any response. What would you do?
Put students in small groups and ask them to work on some questions.
Give a summary of the previous lecture and check for understanding with
questions.
Somehow "force" students to answer your questions.
Dismiss the group earlier and report to the instructor.
Question 9: Many students complained to
you about the poor teaching performance of the instructor. What would you do?
Tell the students that you strongly agree with their opinions.
Tell the instructor directly that his students keep on complaining about
his teaching performance.
Tell the instructor that his students have great difficulties in
understanding his lecture and suggest ways to help students learn.
Tell the students that you will definitely cover some of the lecture
contents in the tutorials again.
Question 10: What will you do in the
first tutorial?
There is nothing important to teach. You simply come to the tutorial,
tell the students your name, office hour etc; ask students for input, if any and then
dismiss the class.
Introduce yourself, including your experience in learning the subject and
why you are excited about the subject. Tell students what you would do in the tutorials.
Organize some activities for students to get acquainted and set a
friendly climate.
Tell the students that you will not teach much in the tutorial. Actually,
you will spend most of the time to answer their questions. Therefore, if they do not have
any question, they need not come.
Question 11: When you graded the
homework, you found that there were a few missing from a group of students who usually
didn't submit their work on time and always plagiarized. Upon query, they insisted they
have handed in their assignments and showed some evidence. What is the next step you would
probably do?
Set a new deadline and ask them to re-submit their work again.
Assume that they haven't submitted their work and give them zeroes.
Assume that they have submitted their work and give them a grade similar
to the average of their previous work.
Ask your instructor to decide what to do.
Question 12 : A student responsed to
your question but the answer was far from a proper or desirable one. What would you do?
Rephrase the answer to provide further hints for thinking or point out
what is missing in the answer.
Joke on students’ answers or comment them in a sarcastic manner.
Ask other students to comment on his/her answer.
Answer the question yourself.
