Modified: February 07, 2022
teaching lessons learned
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.working with Sinclair, Klein, Abbeel, they’ve all got great experience and advice especially for large classes
You don’t have to give the students everything they want. (e.g. written-up solutions to practice problems, homework regrades, etc) If you make it clear what the situation will be, a few will gripe but then will get used to it.
another example of this are responses in forum questions / office hours. you don’t have to answer every question -- it’s okay to say, I think you should go think about that a bit more and then come back.
If you give people something, don’t take it away. This is a lot worse than not having provided it in the first place because then people will complain.
Pointing people to outside resources can be dangerous. It spreads their attention thin and can confuse them or distract them from really focusing on the main material.
The mood of a class is delicate and important to maintain. “It’s hard to un-snark a class”. You set the tone by your attitude.
Asking them for feedback and responding to it helps keep people happy even when things are suboptimal, because they believe you’ll fix them. Communication is key.