TA Training: Five Minute Workshops

Introduction

If you have TAed before how many times have you had the following happen? A student asks for a regrade. They acknowledge their answer is not quite right, but claims "I knew the right answer to the problem, I just didn't write it down correctly."

If you talk with such students further, what you usually find is they had some insight into the problem and its solution, but — as their answer indicates — they often do not understand the solution entirely. Moreover, students often do not understand what constitutes a "good answer" — that what they think they meant is not necessarily what a reader will understand from their answer.

How do students learn to construct "good" answers to homework and exam problems, that is, answers that are correct, clear, well-expressed, etc.? There are a variety of ways including seeing good answers from others (professors, TAs, textbook writers), getting feedback on their own work, and discussing their answers with others. This note presents a short learning activity, called a "Five Minute Workshop," that is another way you can help students learn what constitutes a good answer.

Five-Minute Workshop Explanation

A grading exercise I often use in TA training is the following: given a problem and purported answer, you select one evaluation criterion and then consider what the purported answer did well with respect to that criterion, and how it could be improved with respect to that criterion. If you are leading a recitation or review session you can do a similar activity.

Specifically, you present students with a short question and purported answer, and ask students how well the answer satisfies a specific evaluation criterion: what does it do well with respect to that criterion, and what could be improved, and how? Once students have had a couple minutes to answer these on their own (or in a small group), take a couple minutes to solicit student responses from the entire class.

This entire process should only take about five minutes. So it should involve a short, easily read example, and one very specific evaluation criterion. The sample itself could be actual student work you have permission to use (however, even in that case remove any identifying information about the author), published or online writing, or an example you put together based on typical student work. You might need to modify the sample slightly, for example to remove distracting mistakes not related to the workshop criterion.

The workshop should focus on a criterion students can use right away in their coursework. To reiterate: it is important that the theme in the workshop be something students can use in the coursework they are doing at the time. As an example, suppose that students in a class are having difficulty with terminology and notation, and that it is important they use these correctly in the current homework (and likely throughout the remainder of the class). You could do a five-minute workshop based on correct use of terminology and notation. Note that although correct use of terminology and notation might not seem like the most important item to spend class time on, it is nonetheless important. Moreover, remember one key point of five-minute workshops is that the workshop should take only a short time.

Five-minute workshops have three important characteristics:

1. They are short. As the name suggests they should take about five minutes. Of course, at times there will be a need for longer, detailed, instruction and activities. But for many characteristics of a good answer a few minutes will suffice, and even be preferred. Five-minute workshops do not take overmuch time from other course material and activities, students are likely to be more receptive to shorter activities, and using short activities gives you more flexibility to tie workshops to other class activities (assignments, exams, etc.) as they occur.
    
2. They are focused. Rather than involving the multiple possible characteristics of a good solution, five-minute workshops focus on a single criterion. For example, the criterion could be writing informative in-code comments, it could be using correct terminology and notation in algorithm analysis, it could be writing proofs with good "logical flow." The criterion should be relevant to the class, and something which is part — either implicitly or explicitly — of the course grading.
    
3. They are "actionable". That is, five-minute workshops should involve a criterion that is relevant to current work students are doing in the class. Students should be able to take what they see in the workshop and apply it to a current homework assignment, an immediately upcoming exam, etc.

Summary

Here is a summary of the steps for a five-minute workshop:

1. Give students a quick problem along with a purported solution. These must be short and simple enough that students can read and understand them in a minute or so. It is usually better to project this material than to hand out individual hard copies.
    
2. Give students an evaluation criterion. This criterion should be relevant to current work in the class: it is essential that students be able to take what they learn from the five-minute workshop and then have a chance to apply it elsewhere in the class.
    
3. Ask the students to analyze (i) how well the purported answer fulfills the criterion and (ii) how, specifically, the answer could be improved with respect to the criterion. Tell students they have a couple minutes to do this. You may have students work on this either individually or in small groups.
    
4. Solicit a few answers from the whole class, and then make any summary comments you think will be helpful. Again, this should take only a couple minutes. As part of the summary, tie what students are learning in the workshop to a relevant current assignment, upcoming exam, or other activity.