Tasq

Teaching Assistant Scheduler & Question-Solver

Team AMMMP Section E

Alan Herman | Matthew Hsieh | Montserrat Lobos | Minnar Xie | Paul Kim

Intro Problem Solution + & - Conclusion

Context

● Office hours and not recitations or class

● Observed TAs from both code-intensive classes and classes that were systems design

● Mixed experience levels among TAs


Issues Observed

TA office hours are either really packed or really empty

Empty: TA wastes time and does not work on tasks for office hoursPacked: TA is extremely busy and does not help all students efficiently


Issues Observed

TA answers the same question multiple times


Issues Observed

When the TA doesn’t know the answer to a question, he spends a lot of time searching

through external resources

Wastes the time of TA, Student, and other students who are waiting


Time is not efficiently used

● Not enough TAs relative to students so TAs need to be efficient with time● TAs aren’t prepared for office hours

Systemic Issues


Systemic Issues

● There is no structure to share TA knowledge from semester to semester

○ No required/built-in training

○ No repository for questions and answers


Proposed Solution

(Teaching Assistant Scheduler & Question-Solver)


Proposed Solution

Aggregates student questions before

office hours

Dynamically schedules students with the same problem for the same

time slot

Builds a central repository for Q&A for all TAs, students, and

future semesters


Student 1 has a question.


Student 1 uses TASQ to submit his question to his TA


TASQ aggregates students’ question and groups them


TASQ allows TAs to see if students have submitted any questions


TASQ has grouped similar students’ questions together that allows the TA to send immediate feedback.

If the TA cannot provide an immediate answer, he will select a time slot that works for both students and schedule a time slot during his office hour.


Student 1 is alerted when he gets a response from a TA to his question


Student 1 confirms his appointment to the TA.


The TA views his office hour appointment schedule before the office hour.


TASQ allows the TA to prepare for upcoming questions.


During the office hour.


TA looks at his schedule and notices that Group 1 is the first group in the queue.


TA helps students in Group 1.


TA then moves on to help the next group of students.


TA helps students in group 2.


Students get the help they need in efficient manner, and they are happy.


Design Features

Time for each office hour is adapted to best fit the students’ needs.


Design Features

Notifications will be sent to other TAs if office hours will be very busy


Design Features

TAs can save time explaining the same thing to multiple students because the system automatically matches time slots for students with the same problem


Design Features

TAs can answer the questions of students on the application, saving time at office hours

Students can view answered questions in a repository


Benefits of TASQ

TAs can prep questions before office hours allowing for more efficient time use


Benefits of TASQ

Helps prevent TAs from having to explain solutions for the same problem over and over


Benefits of TASQ

System allows TAs to keep track of what has been asked and answered


Benefits of TASQ

Allows TAs to predict attendance flow


Potential Problems

● The success of the application depends on TAs managing the questions and answers

● TAs having to spend more time outside of office hours


Holes

● Walk-ins vs. appointments

● Last minute questions are inevitable.

● Planning ahead: How early? ○ Can issues can be properly described in questions?

● TAs on-call


Conclusion

Improve Attendance flow

Reduce Redundancy

Efficient use of external resources Reuse Knowledge


Conclusion

This is an iterative design process

Tasq

Design

Transcript of Tasq