Standard Lab Procedures 

1. You must hand out a Syllabus the first week.  It should contain:

   • Your Name  

   • Office Location

   • E-mail Address

   • Office Hours

   • Other Contact Information

   • URL of Lab Coordinator's Lab Manual

2. All 3000 labs must use Electronic Grading 

   • This is a departmental requirement.

   • Students must submit electronically and you must grade them electronically. Do your grading in a timely fashion. Do not wait until the end of the semester to grade your students' reports. If they turn work in on time, you need to put the same pressure on yourself to return the grades that they were under to produce the reports.    Report problems that your students have to admin@ece.msstate.edu .

3. English Grammar  

   • You must count off on formal reports for errors in English grammar.

4. Parts Kits Procedures

   • The TA will go to the shop (Room 309) and sign for enough parts kits for his/her labs.  Notice that you are signing for money.

   • The TA will provide the kits to the students and receive cash only from the students.

   • The TA will return the collected cash and unsold parts kits to Bill Chapman.  (The kits+Dollars given to Bill must equal the amount signed for in the shop.)

   • The IEEE student chapter will sell breadboards and wiring kits. If your lab needs them, your students should purchase them from the IEEE members.

5. Standard Procedures across all Lab sections.  

   • You must deduct 15 points per day for work turned in late, and give no credit for work turned in 1 week or more late. (For summer term, divide 100 points by the number of hours until the due date, and deduct the appropriate number of points per hour it is late. E.g., If the assignment is due in two days, then 2x24 = 48 hours. 100 points / 48 hours is about 2 points per hour that the assignment is late.)**

   • You must use (and give the URL to the students of) the syllabus created by the Lab Coordinator for your lab.

6. Class Aliases

   At the beginning of each semester, email aliases are created for each class being offered that semester. By default, all email sent to these addresses go to the student's MSU email account. An email address is created for the whole class, and email addresses are created for each section of the class.

   • Examples for class ECE1002:

   • Class email: ece1002@ece.msstate.edu

   • Section 1: ece1002-01@ece.msstate.edu

   • These email addresses can also be used by TAs to send emails to their particular lab section.

   • All email sent to the class email aliases is archived. Email sent to class sections is also archived in the main class email archive so students do not have to look up each section individually. A listing of all archived email can be found at:

   • http://www2.ece.msstate.edu/mailman/listinfo
   • If the above link is broken, use this: http://www.ece.msstate.edu/mailman/listinfo

   • An email archive link is also included on each course page, as shown in the ECE1002 course page.

   • Be sure to visit http://www.ece.msstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/ and check out the mailing list for the class you teach.  You should also subscribe yourself to the list. 

   • You may want to have your students check that they are also on the list, but they should automatically be subscribed.  Report any mailing list problems to Michael Lane at admin@ece.msstate.edu.

7. Attendance
   
   

   • Attendance in a Lab by a student is a necessary prerequisite to his or her receiving a grade for that lab, even if the student is taking the course over again. Students may not just turn in a written report. They must do the lab and receive your check-off.

   • If the student is sick or has some other excuse for missing your lab, it is O.K. for him/her to go to another lab period for that lab, IFF

     1. The student informs you and the TA from the other lab.
     2. You and the TA of the other lab communicate agreement.
     3. The student attends the other lab.
     4. The other TA indicates to you that attendance and completion of the lab occurred.
     
     

   • It is the responsibility of the student to see that all the requirements have been met, and that the grade is recorded.

   • Please see that this requirement is communicated to your students.

    

8. Additional attendance note:
   

   • You should know your students. When you take attendance, if there is someone there who is not on your roll, you should ask them what they are doing in your lab. This may help some students to realize that they need to do #1 and #2 in the list, above.

** Special Rules for Summer Classes:

Since summer school is so compressed, the normal language of "15 points
per day an assignment is late" becomes difficult to apply fairly to the
summer school schedule.

What I recommend you do, instead, is to determine how many hours there are
for them to turn the assignment in on time.  Then divide 100 by that many
hours, and say the assignment will be deducted that many points per hour
it is late.

Example:
An assignment is due in two days (=48 hours).  If it is not turned in by
the given due date/hour, then it would lose 100/48 = about 2 points per
hour it is late.

This allows the person who works very hard to get it in on time, but is
still an hour or two late, not to lose a complete day's worth of points
for the hour's tardiness.

Since assignments are submitted electronically, you have the date and time
on each one submitted.