We welcome you as a lab instructor in Stat 151 for Fall Term 2012. The following information will be important to you as the lab instructor:
All labs in Stat 151 will be held in PC labs in Windows 7 environment. You will be using the web-based statistical software StatCrunch version 5.0 . You should check your lab room before the first lab session to get familiar with the computer interface and projectors.
Starting Fall 2012 regular lab sessions in Stat 151 have been discontinued. Instead, lab assistance drop-in sessions will be offerred on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 10:00-16:00 in CAB 331 and CAB 341. The sessions will begin Tuesday, September 11, 2012. The Introductory Lab ("Introduction to StatCrunch 5.0" ) will be discussed in the first week of labs. The Introductory Lab should be treated as a reference material. We do not expect the students to get familiar with all the StatCrunch features discussed there in the first lab session.
For each of the five labs in Stat 151, there are two types of instructional materials: Lab Instructions and Lab Assignments. Lab instructions are supposed to help the students to develop and practice the skills necessary to solve the problems in the corresponding lab assignments.
The students will have two weeks to work on each assignment. You should give an introduction to the topics of the current lab in the first week only. You should spend approximately 15-20 minutes at the start of the lab explaining the lab assignment problems in the context of StatCrunch implementation.
There are five lab assignments in the course. The due dates are provided in the following table:
Lab |
Discussed |
Due Date |
Sept. 18-20 |
Friday, Sept. 28, by 10:00 PM |
|
2 |
Oct. 2-4 |
Friday, Oct. 12, by 10:00 PM |
3 |
Oct. 16-18 |
Friday, Oct. 26, by 10:00 PM |
4 |
Nov. 6-8 |
Friday, Nov.16, by 10:00 PM |
5 |
Nov. 20-22 |
Friday, Nov. 30, by 10:00 PM |
Before students start working on any particular lab assignment, they should first get familiar with the lecture material and with the lab instructions corresponding to the lab assignment. Students are responsible to keep a backup of their work both on the AICT campus file system and on a reliable portable data storage device (floppy disk, ZIP disk or USB Flash Drive) . If they keep their data on a floppy only and the floppy gets damaged or corrupted, they will not be excused!
A student who cannot complete a lab assignment because of an incapacitating illness, severe domestic affliction or other compelling reasons can apply to their course instructor for a transfer of the weight of the missed lab to the final exam. The application should be made within 48 hours of the missed lab assignment due date.
Late or misplaced lab assignments will not be graded and will result in a zero recorded for that assignment.
In general, there are two weeks to complete each lab assignment. In the first week (Discussion Period) the lab assistants will demonstrate StatCrunch features needed in the current lab assignment and clarify lab assignment questions. Each discussion session will start at any full hour between 10:00-16:00. In the second week (Completion Period) the lab assistants will answer any questions the attending students may have about the assignment. Assistance will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.
The graders assigned to mark Stat 151 labs should pick up the lab assignments next working day by noon at the latest. If you are unable to pick up your sections, arrange another TA pick up the assignments for you. The solutions to the lab assignments will be posted on Stat 151 Labs website next working day late afternoon. The assignments should be handed in to the wooden box outside CAB 331/335 by the due date. There are 40 slots in the box, each of them labeled with the name of the lab instructor and the section number. Pick up the key to the lab assignment box from the General Office.
Obtain class lists from the appropriate instructors. It is very convenient to keep a copy of all your records as an Excel file. At the end of the term you should return the file with your grades to the course instructor.
For each lab assignment in the course, there is a detailed solution key with a marking schema in the manual. Please stick to the marking schema while marking the assignments, in this way we will maintain a uniform standard across all Stat 151 lab sections. The grades should not appear on the cover sheet (FOIPP).
In the past we received many complaints from students about inconsistency in marking among lab instructors. This time two graders will be marking labs of one lecture section so any inconistencies are very likely to be reported by students.
It is the grader's responsibility to record the scores for each lab assignment. Return the marked assignments to the corresponding course instructor within one week of the due date.
As the default option, provide the instructors with raw scores for each of the five labs after marking the last lab. Nevertheless, some course instructors may ask you to calculate the overall percentage score for each student in your section. If such request has not been made, then provide the instructors with raw scores for each lab. This score is based on the five lab assignments in the course. The score for the lab exam is not included in the score.
With Excel, it is very easy to calculate the overall percentage by entering an appropriate formula for one student and copying it down for the remaining students. The following formula should be used to calculate the overall percentage score for the five lab assignments in the course:
where Lab1,…, Lab5 are the scores obtained by a particular student, MaxLab1,…, MaxLab5 are the maximum scores for each of the five lab assignments.
