Word: tfs
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Professors echo graduate students' complaints, saying that shopping period wastes a week of class time and often forces them to hire unqualified Teaching Fellows (TFs) when enrollment exceeds expectations...
First, uncertainty in enrollment means that undergraduates can end up being taught by ill-prepared TFs added to the teaching staff at the last minute...
...these critical improvements, I believe, can be achieved through one change in the system: have students read each others' writing. Professors and TFs should allot 20 minutes of the section near the time papers are assigned for students to throw around ideas for paper topics. Do the same as the deadline approaches, so that students may share research tips, discuss writing strategies and, in general, help one another produce work of a higher quality...
...course, time constraints in some classes could mean a different approach to creating this reading community. Instead, TFs might photocopy and distribute select student essays judged to be most compelling for discussion. At a bare minimum, TFs could compile a list of the theses students argued in their papers, and a discussion could take place without hard copies of students' work...
...matter how TFs might go about making the paper-writing process more interactive, important benefits would accrue. Student writers would look at their papers with more respect. The rationalizations that "Only my TF will see it, so I don't really care," or, "It's only 20 percent of my grade" would prove inadequate. The feeling of uselessness that comes from spending days and nights laboring for the sake of getting the paper done would be lessened as the audience is increased...