EE
361L Digital Systems and Computer Design Laboratory
Teaching Assistant
Information
Last updated June
2010
Summary of Work
Hours
The following duties and their approximate,
average weekly hours are per lab session. In
many cases, a teaching assistant (TA) will
cover two sessions in a semester. Then
the average hours per week is doubled.
Duty
|
Average
Hours Per Week
|
Laboratory preparation
A lab TA is required to do the laboratory assignment before
administering it. In addition, there may
be assistance in preparing laboratory assignments. There is also
preparation to give a short overview of each lab session.
|
3
|
Laboratory
Sessions
Laboratory sessions are 3 hours per week. This includes an oral
presentation of a short overview of each lab session.
|
3
|
Weekly
Meeting with Instructor
|
0.5
|
Office
Hours
Note that office hours are to be held in Holmes 451.
|
1
|
Grading
Grading varies per
week. There are about 10 lab assignments that covers 14
weeks. Some laboratory reports are more difficult to grade than
others. Note that one of the lab assignments has an oral
presentation of 8 minutes per student which are done during the
laboratory session.
|
2.5
|
TOTAL
|
10
|
Lab Equipment and
Parts
10 benches, each
having
- Oscilloscope
- Digital multimeter
- Clock generator
- Power supply
- Desktop PCs with the application software
Other Equipment
locked in the file and storage cabinets
- 12 Digilent FPGA
boards
- Protoboards (if
needed since students should own them)
- Picstart plus
programmers for PIC microcontrollers
- Supply of
25 PIC microcontrollers and clock crystals. There are other
parts, such as LEDs and resistors that you can get from Myron
Sugiki. Be sure to check your parts before the lab assignment.
- 10 wire
cutters and strippers
What to do at the
beginning of the semester
- Before the very first laboratory meeting
- Go to the EE Office Holmes 483 and introduce yourself.
- Become familiar with the services of the office for your
teaching assistantship. For your laboratory sections and
students, you may
- Make photocopies for labs
- Get office supplies for the labs, e.g., pencils, paper
clips, and paper and dry ink (toner) for laboratory printers.
- Have a desk in the TA office
- You will need access to the TA office and Holmes 451, which
is the EE 361L. Get the door lock combinations to these offices
from the EE Office.
- Meet the instructor at least a week before the first laboratory
meeting and get
- The list of students per lab section from the instructor in
an excel spreadsheet
- Copies of textbooks
- Keys for the file and storage cabinets
- Read
the Department web site instructions for TAs
- Read
the EE 361L web site.
- Complete the TA checklist
- Be sure to have office hours in Holmes 451. You should
have at least one office hour per lab section. So if you are in
charge of 2 lab sections then you should have 2 hours of office
hours. Be sure that your students can attend. Let the EE
Office know of your office hours.
- Introduce yourself to the Department staff Mr. Myron Sugiki
(myron@spectra.eng.hawaii.edu)
- Get wire from Myron (copper telephone wire to be used with
protoboards)
- If there are any equipment or safety problems, contact Myron
immediately.
- There is another EE staff member that will be coming on board
and who will be taking care of the laboratory computers and networks.
- Get enough copies of the Risk & Release forms from the EE
Office Holmes 483
- During the first laboratory meeting
- Have students sign and turn in Risk & Release forms.
Turn these into the EE Office Holmes 483
- Go
over the EE 361L Web Site
- Make a sign-up sheet for students per lab section and have the
students sign and enter their email addresses. This will be
redundant with the student list from the course instructor (see above)
but it will help identify students who are improperly registered.