Helping

You are in fact taking on the role of a teacher, which can be quite daunting at first. You should receive additional general training from the Graduate School - it is University Policy that noone can teach unless they have attended a University-run training course.

In most laboratories, students will be instructed simply to put up their hand if they require assistance. Sometimes a `Help List' will be put on the whiteboard, or maybe the Laboratory Supervisor will ask you to assist a student. Even if you are marking, you can usually spend time helping students, unless of course there is a large amount of marking to do. In this case, the Laboratory Supervisor will indicate what the priority should be, perhaps undertaking help themselves and allowing you to get on with marking.

• Some students get into the habit of asking for help whenever they are stuck, and almost give up trying to help themselves. In the worst case their solution will actually have been team-written by a sequence of demonstrators helping them. Please try to avoid this -- it probably more worthwhile for the student to acknowledge and address any problems they are having than to get the demonstrator team to produce a solution.

• Try not to simply tell the student the answer. For example if their C program has a parse error, ensure that they know that this is what the compiler is telling them and then show them how to find the syntax error. If you just tell them the syntax error, it is likely you will be called back shortly to find the next one that the compiler has reported.

• Please do not spend large amounts of time just helping one student. If a student is likely to need more than 5 or 10 minutes' help then this is probably best handled outside the laboratory, perhaps by the Laboratory Supervisor or by the student's personal tutor. You do need to share yourself around all students.

• If there is a slack period in actually marking or responding to requests for help, you should walk around the laboratory and proactively check how students are getting on and giving help as necessary. For some reason, students are more likely to ask for help if you walk past them, and perhaps even offer it, than if they have to put up their hand or come to find you.

Finally, at the end of the laboratory don't forget to ask the Laboratory Supervisor to sign your timesheet so that the School is able to pay you.