Time-Management Suggestions for GSIs

What Faculty Teaching with GSIs Can Do:

• Look at your plan for assignments that need to be graded during the semester. Try to structure them so that GSIs have some time between assignments.
• Meet with GSIs regularly. Make sure to have an agenda for each meeting. Make sure expectations for such things as section activities, grading, office hours, etc., are clear.
Go over exams and assignments with GSIs before photocopying them and distributing them to students. GSIs can help identify any potential points of confusion for students that could lead ultimately to difficulties in grading.
• Have a norming session with GSIs after students turn in each graded assignment. Offer tips to save time while grading. Let GSIs know how much time you expect them to spend on each assignment so that they can time themselves.
• Offer GSIs the option of deciding if they would like to grade exams as a group. It can save time for each GSI to grade all of a certain question or a few questions instead of grading the entire exam for each of their students.
• Together with your GSIs, create a grading rubric for each assignment. This will help GSIs save time and ensure fairness in grading across the sections. See GSI Teaching and Resource Center online Teaching Guide for GSIs for directions on how to create a rubric.
• Be cognizant of the time it takes GSIs to grade assignments during the semester so that the workload of GSIs does not exceed the hours designated by their appointment. For example, offering an additional extra-credit assignment may add too much extra grading time.
• Provide GSIs with contact information or materials from past GSIs that they can use in designing their section lesson plans.
• Encourage GSIs to share their materials with each other. Consider setting up a separate bSpace site for this purpose.

What GSIs Can Do:

Preparing for Section

• Send out reading questions to your students a few days before section. It will help them to be prepared and will save you time in lesson planning because you will have identified the important points ahead of time.
• Figure out how much time you need to plan a good section, then time yourself and stick to a set amount of time when planning each lesson.
• Have students sign up for days when they will be on call and responsible for being able to answer some question or summarize the main points of a reading. This takes some of the pressure off of you and also gives the students a structured way to participate in section.

Email and Communication

• Communicate clearly to students your policy on responding or not responding to email messages.
• Set up a separate email address where students can email you. Only check this email when you plan to respond to student emails. Be clear with your studentsabout when you will be available, how often you check your email, and how much time they should allow for you to get back to them.
• Give students a deadline for sending questions electronically before exams and assignments. Let them know when you will stop responding to emails.
• If students email questions that are similar in nature, send one response out to whole class to avoid having to answer the same questions over and over.
• Set up a bSpace forum for students to post questions to each other. Give them participation credit for posting and answering questions on the forum. This works especially well around exam time.
• Be clear with students about what kinds of questions (e.g., administrative inquiries) are appropriate for email and what kinds of questions are more appropriate for class or office hours (more complicated substantive questions about course material). If the answer to a question is on the syllabus, let them know you will simply refer them to the syllabus.

• Instead of preparing a lesson plan for review sessions from scratch, solicit student questions about what they are still having difficulty with and use them as a basis for review sessions.
• Consider running review sessions with another GSI.
• Ask the professor you are teaching with to provide you with copies of past (or current) exams and assignments ahead of time. This can help to give you an idea of which parts of the semester will be most work intensive.
• Plan to allot a greater portion of your hours to office hours around exam and assignment time. Consider having students sign up for office hours ahead of time or have them attend in small groups to save time.
• Go over assignment prompts with the entire class to avoid too many individual questions over email.
• Consider making peer review either required or optional; some of the smaller problems with papers can be solved by other students.

Office Hours

• If your department allows it, schedule one office hour by appointment. There will always be students who cannot make your office hours because of some other commitment. Having an office hour by appointment gives you built in time to set up appointments with students. Some weeks you will have no students that need to see you by appointment and you can save up these extra hours to use around exam/assignment time.
• Have open office hours during times when not many students are likely to show up, but have sign-ups for office hours during busy times during the semester to make sure everyone has a chance to see you.
• Remind students at the beginning of scheduled office hour appointments how much time you have before the next student arrives. This will help your students prioritize their questions.
• Try to schedule your office hours so that they overlap with two class times, e.g., 1:30-2:30 . This means that more students will be able to meet with you.
• Use your office hours as a designated time to do work connected to the course if you have time between students. Make sure you always have something course-related with you in case not many students show up.
• Be clear with students about what types of questions are appropriate for office hours and what types of questions are better answered in class or via email.
• Be clear about the purpose of office hours and what students can expect of you. For example, will you read drafts in office hours?

Grading

• Grade with other GSIs. It makes the work more fun and it is easier to pace yourself when you are grading with someone else.
• Together with the professor and fellow GSIs, create and use a grading rubric. This will help you focus your written comments on the major objectives of the assignment or question, ensure fairness, and minimize grade challenges. See the GSI Teaching and Resource Center ’s online Teaching Guide for GSIs for step-by-step directions on creating grading rubrics.
• Ask the professor how much time it should take you to grade each paper. Make sure that you are not spending too much time and adjust accordingly.
• Once you have determined the amount of time you will spend on each paper, time yourself. You can give yourself a certain amount of time to grade one paper (e.g., 20 minutes) and then begin writing comments five minutes before the end of time. Another alternative is to give yourself a certain amount of time to grade multiple papers as some papers will take more or less time to grade (e.g., 60 minutes for three papers).
• For assignments or exams with multiple questions, grade each question on all of the exams before moving on to the next question.
• If you are allowed, split up the grading and consider having each GSI grade all of one or two questions for all students in the class instead of grading the entire exam.
• Ask the professor with whom you are teaching how detailed your comments should be on exams and papers.
• Type your comments so that you can cut and paste comments that are applicable to several students.

Note: GSIs are responsible for talking with the course instructor or supervisor as soon as they anticipate any workload related issues that would result in working more than their assigned hours so that modifications can be made.

For further time management tips for teaching and` materials to help you organize your time, see the Teaching Guide for GSIs page Getting Started: Time Management Strategies.