GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR GSIs
Econ 100b, Fall 2005
Charles I. Jones


Weekly GSI meeting on Fridays at 1:30pm in my office.


OVERVIEW

Since the GSIs are the main contact that students have with the
instructors (me and you) of this course, your performance is critical to
our collective success.  Let me say up front that I appreciate all of
the hard work that you will invest in the course, and I think you will
find this to be a rewarding experience.

The students are our paying customers, and we should treat them
accordingly.  Without them, none of us would be here!


LECTURES

GSIs should plan on attending all lectures, Tues-Thurs 3:30-5pm in
Dwinelle 155.  If you must miss a lecture or two during the term, that
is fine.  Be sure to get notes from another GSI so you know exactly what
I covered.  If you have to miss more than two lectures, you should talk
to me.


PROBLEM SETS

There will be weekly problem sets.  Each week, one of you will be
responsible for creating a pdf file that contains the solutions to a
problem set.  These solutions should be written up by the time of our
GSI meeting *before* the solutions are to be handed out.  Please email
me a copy of the solutions before our meeting.  Example: Problem Set 1
is due in section on Sept 5/6.  Whoever is in charge of preparing the
solutions for that problem set should bring them to the meeting that
occurs before Sept 7/8, when the solutions will be handed out.  Each
week, another GSI will also be in charge of checking the solutions.
This can be done after we have discussed them in the meeting.  The
"checker" should take the draft solution set, go away and work out all
the answers (without looking at the solution set) and then check to see
that the answers are correct.  Then the two GSIs should get together,
with the original person writing up the final solution set.  Complete
solutions as a PDF file should be emailed to me by the morning of the
day the problem set is due.

All GSIs should solve the problem sets themselves so that you can answer
student questions.  However, only 1 GSI each week will need to prepare a
computer file that we post for the students to see.  Of course, this
means that when it is your turn, you should do an especially good job.

I propose the following schedule:

                Write     Check
      ProbSet  Solutions Solutions
     ------------------------------
        1,9  =  Daniel	 Omar
	2,10 =  Day 	 Shishu
	3,11 =  Si-Yeon	 David
	4,12 =  Andrew	 Hannah
	5,13 =  Omar 	 Dan
	6,14 =  Shishu	 Day
	7,15 =  David 	 Si-Yeon
	8,16 =  Hannah   Andrew

Problem sets should be graded out of 10 points. You should give some
minor indication of what the student has done wrong when you mark off
points, but there is no need to indicate the correct solution; that is
what the solution sets are for.  Please use the following scale:

     10=everything correct, 9=a few very minor mistakes	 
     8=solid work with some mistakes, 7=below average	 
     5=Half right, half wrong, 2=Very little right		 
     0=Nothing right or failed to turn in.                    


SECTION MEETINGS

You have 2 section meetings per week with the students. In general, one
of those meetings should be spent going over the problem set from the
week before and answering any questions the students may have. For the
other meeting, you should come prepared with some lecture material of
your own. You can cover anything you feel will be helpful to the
students: clarifying some of the material I covered in lecture, covering
material I didn't get a chance to cover, or going over something you
think would be interesting. Feel free to share notes with each other if
that is helpful. Occasionally, I may have specific things I'll ask you
to cover.

As a general rule, you should not miss any of your section meetings. Of
course in practice there are times when we need to make exceptions. If
you are going to have to miss a section meeting, you should (a) discuss
the circumstances with me in advance, and (b) arrange for one of the
other GSIs to cover your section. This may involve your covering for the
other GSI at some other point in time. The same rule applies for office
hours.



SUGGESTIONS FOR GRADING EXAMS

1. Grade question by question, i.e. do all of the Question 1s, then all
of the Question 2s, etc.

2. After you've graded one question, go back to the first few exams you
graded and make sure you've been consistent. 

3. Just do your best and do what makes sense. As long as you are
consistent across exams, everything works fine.

4. There is no need to assign letter grades, just points. I will not
assign letter grades until the very end.

5. Write grades on INSIDE cover (so other students can't see them).

6. Place a red mark on blank pages as an indication that you've looked
at the page (so that students cannot come back later saying you didn't
notice that 3 pages later they had written the correct answer...).