TA Guidelines

General Rules and Expectations

This page outlines the general important rules and expectations that apply to you as a TA. Based solely on what you might have seen TAs do in classes when you were a student, you might not expect some of these, so you should take the time to read through this page.

Inside OH

Below are rules and expectations that apply when you are holding OH.

Never touch a student's computer.

This is a fireable offense.

It takes away the student's agency when they are trying to learn.

You can not have the reference solution open during OH.

There are two potential major negative consequences of a TA having the reference solution for the assignment open during OH. Firstly, students might be able to glance off of it, and then directly "copy" the answer. Secondly, if you are overly reliant on the reference solution during OH, this prevents you from giving students guidance and getting them unstuck; rather, it allows you to easily push them directly toward the answer, which would negatively affect their learning. There will be a TA guide that you are allowed to have open during OH. Additionally, you can also have the student-facing guide open, as well as any other resources that are provided to the students.

You should thoroughly prepare for OH.

This will help you avoid breaking the previous rule. You should not plan to "wing it." It is an expectation that you take the time and effort to thoroughly prepare for OH. For more tips on how to "OH prep," click on the "Office Hours TAs" tab.

Follow the time-per-person limit.

You should stick to the time-per-person limit given in the queue. If a student is given 8 minutes, take that time limit as a rule, not a suggestion. Only in rare cases (e.g., if a student is very distressed or confused) should you ignore the time limit. Consistently going overtime during OH is a sign that you might be trying too hard to solve all the bugs for the student, rather than simply getting them unstuck. Moreover, the time limit should be followed to be fair to all students in OH. Going over the time limit is not fair to the other students waiting in the queue, nor is it fair to other students in the room who might be considering joining the queue.

Make sure to end your OH block on time.

This is for fairness and to protect your time; moreover, if another class is using that space for OH afterward, it is important to allow them to use it effectively. You can pause or close the queue at any point in the OH block to try to prevent having students left over in the queue at the end. If, unfortunately, there are students left over in the queue, you will have to tell them to wait for the next OH block.

When you escalate to course leadership, also have the student push to GitLab.

When you escalate to course leadership, have the student push to GitLab so that course leadership can look at the most recent version of their code. In CS 1, you can use Ctrl+Shift+P to open the command palette, type "> push", and select "Push to Gitlab" to push to a separate branch. When in doubt, you can have the student commit and push just as they would if they were submitting the assignment. As a reminder, you should escalate if all active TAs in OH are unable to help the student. You should also send a message in the discord informing course staff about the situation (please include the student's access username so course staff can find their repo)!

If you are the last OH of the day, make sure to "Reset to None Mode."

If you are the last OH of the day, make sure to tap "Reset to None Mode" on the phone control to reset the screens in CS^2. Additionally, turn off the lights and close the door behind you before you leave. In general, make sure you set an example for the students and treat CS^2 well: this includes pushing in the chairs and returning markers and erasers to the right spots.

Outside of Actively Acting as a TA

Below are rules and expectations that apply when you are outside OH/lecture/lab (i.e., while you are not actively TA-ing).

You are not allowed to provide help to students outside of OH.

This is an honor code violation.

This is for equity purposes. One example is, let us say that all the TAs for a course are in Apricot House. In this case, any students in Apricot House can easily access the TA and ask them for help, but any students in Banana House would not be able to, leading to students in Apricot House having an unfair advantage over students in Banana House. Additionally, this rule helps you set a boundary between work and your personal life. Hence, for equity purposes and for everyone's benefit, students should not be contacting you outside of OH asking for help; it is actually an honor code violation for them to do so (as per the CS 2 (2025 Winter) collaboration policy, for example). Hence, it is essential that you uphold this rule.

Check discord regularly.

The discord server for the course staff will be the primary channel of communication. Thus, it is your responsibility to check discord at least once a day so that you do not miss any important communication. You must turn on @teaching-assistant notifications for discord.

Do not disagree with course policy or course decisions in front of students.

If you find that any students have disagreements with course policy, or if you yourself disagree with a piece of course policy, you should not disagree with course leadership's decisions in front of students. This is a bad look for course staff; it is important to be professional and present a united course front. Moreover, in front of students, you should defend and explicitly explain the stated reasons for that policy or decision.

Please bring up any disagreements you have with course policy or decisions privately to course leadership: it is fine and in fact encouraged to have disagreements privately and professionally. Course leadership/the professor(s) prefer for TAs to care about these things, and to respectfully and thoughtfully engage with them to make the course better.

Expectations for Interacting with Students

Below are items describing additional aspects of how you are expected to act while interacting with students, inside and outside of OH.

Do not comment about a student's performance to others.

In general, discussing student grades with people outside course staff is not only uncool, but it is a FERPA violation. You should absolutely not talk about how a student is doing in the course with people outside course staff. Moreover, when you discuss student performance with other members of course staff, you should remain professional and respectful.

Be cautious about alienating students when describing your experience with the course.

Keep in mind that as a TA, you are likely to have "expert blind spot" and may have done very well in some aspects of the course when you took it. Hence, when talking about aspects with students, you should refrain from saying things such as, "I remember that quiz! It was so easy and I got a (high score) when I took it." These words might alienate students who did struggle with that quiz, discouraging and demotivating them. This also applies to if you have a negative experience. While it's acceptable and encouraged to relate to and validate students ("I definitely understand if you're struggling with this concept, since I struggled with it, too."; "This assignment is definitely nontrivial, but we can take a look at your work together."), you should be cautious about "scaring" students. For instance, if students are about to take an assessment that you struggled with when QA'ed (did quality assurance for), you should not tell students about how hard you found the assessment. A lot of education relates back to psychology.

Course-Specific Rules and Procedures

Below are rules and procedures that may apply to (multiple) specific courses.

Please be on time!

It is extremely important to us that you are on time. For every minute that you are late to a meeting, you would have wasted a total of "the number of people in the room" multiplied by the "the number of minutes you are late by." So, please respect each other's time! If you are going to be late, please contact course leadership/professor(s) immediately.

On second attempts on diagnostics, you are not allowed to help students.

This applies to all courses with diagnostics. You can refer students to the course policy page, which states that they can collab with their peers who are currently in the class on the second attempt.

OH slots will be distributed in an auction at the start of the term.

This is generally how OH slots will be distributed for the professor(s)'s courses. Right before the term starts, there will be a course staff meeting. In this course staff meeting, each member of course staff will receive tokens, and these tokens will be used to bid in an auction for OH slots. For example, the professor(s) might announce that the slot for Thursdays 7:30pm-8:30pm is being auctioned off. If you want that slot, you can call out "x tokens." If someone else then wants that slot, they will call out "y > x tokens." The person who calls the greatest number of tokens will get that slot. Before the auction, members of course leadership may have already been assigned to some slots. Scheduling is done this way in hopes that all TAs are able to sign up for times that they are available (it's also a fun way to get to know each other!). As such, we highly suggest that you look over your own schedule before the meeting!