ENED 1120 Teaching Assistant

About

I had the privilege of being a teaching assistant for the ENED 1120 course in the spring semester of 2023. I remember what an impact my TAs had been when I took the course my freshman year, and I felt called to be that source of information and support to the future engineers who were taking the course. It was definitely a challenge at times to maintain the balance of grading, preparing in-class demos, and tutoring with the rest of the coursework I was taking, but in the end the experience was nothing but rewarding. I was able to connect with and assist students in a wide array of subjects, such as programming, statistics, and physics, and I hope that I made a meaningful impact on their learning experience.

As I interacted with the students in my sections, and occasionally with students in other sections, I began to pinpoint specific common stumbling blocks that these freshman were running into throughout their coursework. One of these stumbling blocks was the idea of logical flow with regards to programming. The course covers the basics of Python, MATLAB, and VBA, and coding can come with a bit of a learning curve to someone with no experience. Due to the fast-paced (and compounding) nature of the course, concepts could be easily misunderstood, or learned to be used in improper manners. Often times, I would see students just copy and paste old code from in class examples, meaning they knew that the block of code was meant to do something, but when pressed, they couldn't fully explain what it was doing, or even why they were doing it.

If you miss the motivation behind why you type certain commands onto your computer, you'll never be able to practically use those commands in an organic manner. Once I walked students through what the commands actually did, they started to get a better grasp on what they should be doing, as well as how to do it. After discussion with some of the professors, we agreed that reinstating the teaching of flowcharts as part of the programming curriculum would benefit the students with no programming background. Without any worry of syntax, students can flesh out the logical flow of their desired programs in an understandable manner, and be able to grasp the motivation of what they were doing. Then, they could turn this diagram into working code.

Who Benefits?

The main beneficiary of this learning experience were the engineering students enrolled in ENED 1120. They were impacted firsthand by my position, as I played a role in teaching and evaluating the concepts the course covered.

The other beneficiaries were the professors I worked with, whether it was my section professor, Dr. Yoon, or one of the lead professors, such as Dr. Kastner.

Take Aways

One of the biggest take-aways from this experience was the experience of being in a true leadership position. I have had "leadership" positions in the past, but never one as part of an employment. The students experience as part of this class partially relied on me doing my job properly and efficiently, and while I wasn't perfect, I made sure to always put my best effort towards being a reliable worker.

I also was able to diversify my perspective regarding engineering as a whole, as I met many people from different backgrounds, who all had different opinions on subjects, assignments, and projects. I got a lot of valuble insight from the students in my section about the way things were taught, amongst other things.

Example

An example flowchart created to help students plan their robot projects