/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.12608639]

Does anyone here teach STEM subjects? What's it like?

[Anonymous No.12608730]

>>12608639
not exactly teach, but tutor. You begin to appreciate midwit students, because you don't have to go into real life analogy garbage to explain a concept, a bit of geometric intuition suffices usually.

[Anonymous No.12608741]

>>12608639
Not currently. I used to teach sophomore organic chemistry labs, and had to grade exams/homework/quizes and hold office hours for the accompanying lecture courses.
It wasn't great.
Students fall into 3 groups:
1) smart/motivated, they will do well no matter what (5-15% of students)
2) the vast middle (up to 80% of students) - people who will get B/C grades and don't realize they could get A/B grades if they applied themselves, came to office hours, worked more exercises from the text.
3) real dumbasses, crazy, fully disengaged - they fail the course (5%).
Grading lab notebook pages, lab reports and exams is awful tedious work.
Using Gradescope for exams is better than doing it by hand. With Gradescope the students see the rubric, the need to write individualized comments is dramatically reduced, and the software does the arithmetic (no checking and double checking scores by page and total by exam packet with a calculator). It also removes the hollow threat about scanning and regrades (all packets are scanned, students no longer get the exam packet back with an opportunity to alter it and submit for a regrade).
there's a lot more that could be said, but being a TA sucks.