This FAQ is intended to help new instructors in UNC’s Math Department get started. Additional resources are listed below:
What is Sakai and how do I use it?
What other instructional technology should I use?
Do I need to enter grades somewhere throughout the term?
How do I find out who my TA/grader is (if any)?
What is the TA/grader expected to do?
What information do I need to include in the syllabus?
Are certain forms of teaching/evaluation required or not allowed?
Are take-home exams ok?
How are exams scheduled?
Students will want me to add/drop them from my class. How does this work?
How many office hours do I hold?
Who evaluates me?
What university policies are there on accepting late work/exam rescheduling, etc.?
What should my distribution of course grades be?
Am I supposed make the letter grades correspond to particular percentages?
Should I curve grades, and if so, how?
What is Sakai and how do I use it?
Sakai is the course management system used throughout UNC. Your students will expect to find information about your class on the class’s Sakai site starting a few days before the first day of class. Typically, instructors use the Sakai site to post the syllabus, grades, any course notes or reference materials. You can also use it to send announcements to your students.
To set up a Sakai site for your class, login to sakai.unc.edu, click on Worksite Setup > New > Course Site and select the term. The class(es) that you are teaching should appear and you can create a site for each of them. You can choose the tools that are visible to your students. I usually use Resources, Gradebook, Syllabus, Lessons (or Wiki), Site Info, and Announcements (to start out). I use Resources to put all my course notes and other materials, and Lessons (or Wiki) as a front end where I organize the class by class date and put links to the materials in Resources.
UNC provides this tutorial for setting up your Sakai course site.
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What other instructional technology should I use?
There is no other instructional technology that you are required to use, but you may want to check out some of following tools which are used by other instuctors in the math department and across UNC, especially for large classes:
Do I need to enter grades somewhere throughout the term?
I suggest entering all grades on the Sakai gradebook. That way, students can see them and know where they stand and catch any grading errors.
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How do I find out who my grad student teaching assistant / grader is (if any)?
The Undergraduate Student Services Manager or the Director of Undergraduate Studies should email you a course schedule a few weeks before the start of the term (if you don’t receive one, please contact them!) Classes numbered between 300 and 699 typically do get a grad student as a teaching assistant (TA), and the course schedule will list their name in the far left column titled Assistant or Notes. Large classes (over ~100 students) will get more than one TA. Classes numbered in the 200’s (the calculus sequence) have attached recitation sections, and the grad student TA’s for the recitation sections for your lecture section will be listed underneath your your name, in the Instructor column.
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What is the TA expected to do?
A TA for a class numbered 300 – 699 is allotted 6 hours per week to help with your class. (Small honors classes may only get 3 hours per week.) Usually the TA grades homework for the class every week. For some classes, the TA may also be asked to help grade tests. Sometimes an instructor will ask the TA to attend class and help answer questions while students are working on problems. (Undergraduate learning assistants (ULAs) are also available to help during class for some 300 and 500 level classes.)
For recitations, the TA is allotted 3 hours per week for each recitation, and are normally assigned a block of 2 or 3 recitations for the same lecture section. This 3 hours per recitation includes only 50 minutes of recitation time, so the other 2 hours can be allotted to prep time, grading assignments or quizzes, holding office hours and review sessions, attending lecture and answering student questions there, helping grade tests and final exams, etc. at your discretion.
You are not required to use all the TA hours allotted to your course, but you should take care that the duties you assign your TA do not put them over their allotted weekly hours on average.
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What information do I need to include in the syllabus?
The Office of Undergraduate Curricula gives these general syllabus guidelines. In addition, this 2012 faculty council resolution gives a list of items that need to be included. It can be helpful to look at the syllabus for the class that you are teaching from a previous semester. You may be able to find on on the Math Graduate Resources Sakai site (ask Miranda Thomas or Linda Green for access), or you can ask the Undergraduate Student Services Manager for the Math Department to show you one, or you can contact the instructor from a previous semester directly, which can also help you get access to other materials used in previous semesters. Please ask the Undergraduate Student Services Manager or the Director of Undergraduate Studies who has taught your course recently.
Note that a copy of your syllabus must be uploaded onto UNC’s Online Syllabus Management System by the first day of class.
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Are certain forms of teaching/evaluation required or not allowed?
There are no hard requirements for all classes.
Lower level courses numbered 299 and below) have more requirements than upper level classes. Lower level classes have a course coordinator who oversees all sections of the course, puts together common homework assignments, a common syllabus or syllabus template, a common final exam, and possibly common midterm exams for all sections of the course. The course coordinator may also require certain forms of teaching, such as use of clicker questions or pre-class videos, although often the specific teaching methods are still left up to the individual instructor
For higher level courses (numbered 300 and above), the instructor has discretion as to their methods of teaching and evaluation, although there are a number of best practices endorsed by many of the teaching faculty members, such as frequent low-stakes assessment (quizzes, clicker questions), interactive teaching (asking students to answer concept questions and work short problems in class, and assessments that require students to write out explanations or proofs (instead of pure multiple choice).
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Are take-home exams ok?
Take home exams are allowed, but not frequently used. They can be an effective way to save class time and allow students more time to work on more involved problems than an in-class test can allow for. Typically take-home exams are open book and open notes, but students are told not to collaborate or use the internet. It is easier to cheat on take-home exams than on in-class exams, so the instructor may want to discuss expectations and the honor system explicitly when using take-home exams.
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How are exams scheduled?
Midterms (mid-semester tests) are scheduled by instructors during the regular class period in the regular classroom. Final exams are scheduled by the Registrar’s office, with the schedule posted here, based on the meeting pattern of the class. Note, however, that courses with common final exams (Math 110, 130, 152, 231, 232, 233) have their exams all at the same time which is labeled on the Registrar’s schedule but does not correspond to the meeting pattern of the class. Also, classes offered by the Friday Center primarily for part time students may have a different final exam schedule.
Classes with common final exams have their exams in larger rooms, different from the usual classroom. The room assignments are made by the Math Department Administrative Support Staff. Other classes meet for their final exam in their usual classroom.
Note that students with an exam conflict (two exams at the same time or three exams within 24 hours) can get an official exam excuse from the Advisor’s Office to take their exam late, either during the official make-up exam time (for courses with common final exams) or at a time mutually convenient for student and instructor (for other courses).
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Students will want me to add/drop them from my class. How does this work?
Most of the time, instructors of courses do not need to be directly involved with students dropping and adding the class. During the drop add period, which extends 1 – 2 weeks into the semester, students can drop themselves via Connect Carolina and can also add themselves if space is available.
Some semesters, the Math Department uses a “Closed Course Request Form” to manage a wait list for the class, if so, please refer students who wish to add to this form. If this form is NOT being used, then students need to keep checking Connect Carolina, or can contact the Undergraduate Student Services Manager for additional information.
While students are trying to add, I encourage them to sit in on the class (with instructor permission, and physical space permitting) in order to keep up with the class while they are waiting for a space. I recommend manually adding them as a student or guest to my Sakai site (see Sakai > Site Info > Add Participants) to allow them access to course information while they are waiting to add.
Only in special situations do students need instructor permission to drop or add, for example, if student is trying to drop after the drop/add deadline, or a student wants to add a class that requires certain prerequisites “or consent of the instructor”. Please work with the Undergraduate Student Services Manager to help a student add your class when they are not able to do it themselves.
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How many office hours do I hold?
Instructors are expected to hold three hours of office hours per week. In order to accommodate a variety of student schedules, it can be helpful to hold office hours at different times of day on different days.
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Who evaluates me?
Teaching faculty members and postdocs are observed by other faculty members once per semester.
In addition, students will fill out standard UNC course evaluations at the end of the semester. Instructors are able to add up to five questions that they write themselves in these student course evaluations. The response rate on these student evaluations tends to be higher if instructors have students fill them out during class time or offer some incentive for students to fill them out on their own. My favorite incentive is the following: if at least 80% of students fill out the course evaluation, I will drop the lowest homework score. Additional information on student course evaluations is available from the Office of Undergraduate Curricula.
Some instructors ask the students to fill out mid-semester evaluations, using Qualtrics or another questionnaire system. I like to use a simple questionnaire with only a few questions, something like “What do you like about the class that you want to continue?”, and “What would you suggest changing about the class?” If I am teaching a class with recitations, I ask the same questions about recitation and also as them to give their recitation TA’s name. Mid-semester student evaluations can be a great way to get feedback while there is still time to incorporate it.
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What university policies are there on accepting late work/exam rescheduling, etc.?
The University requires instructors to accommodate students who miss tests or other graded work due to:
I require written documentation for academic field trips and university sports, but not for religious holidays since I can google those. For disability, I rely on email notifications from Accessibility Resources Services. For illness and emergencies, I require students to get the Dean of Students to write them an email on their behalf. I ask students to take a missed exam early instead of late, so that it doesn’t delay handing back exams and posting solutions for other students, which is possible for all of the above situations except not usually for illness or emergency.
To accommodate students who miss tests or graded work for other reasons, I put a policy on my syllabus that I will replace a missed test with the grade on the final exam (if the student doesn’t miss a test, I will replace the lowest test score with the final exam score, if the final exam score is higher). I also usually drop the lowest one or two quiz scores, homework scores, etc. regardless of reason, since occasional absences are a fact of life and this is much easier than making individual special exceptions or judging or verifying reasons for absences.
What should my distribution of course grades be?
The distribution of grades for your course should probably resemble the distribution of grades for the same course or similar courses taught in previous semesters. You can find information about past grade distributions in ConnectCarolina > Enterprise Reporting > Infoporte > Student > Instructor Grading Patterns Report > Class Data. Typically, class averages are in the C / C+ range for low level classes in the Precalculus / Calculus sequence (Math 110, 130, 231) in the C+ / B- range for classes in the upper end of the Calculus sequence (Math 232, 233), and around B- / B for higher level classes.
Am I supposed make the letter grades correspond to particular percentages? E.g. does it matter if 93% is an A- or A?
No, there is no such requirement. Many instructors use a 10 point scale, in which [80, 83) is a B-, [83, 87) is a B, and [87, 90) is a B+, etc. UNC does not have an A+ grade. Some instructors use a 15 point scale instead, so that [70, 75) is a B-, [75, 80) is a B, [80, 85) is a B+, etc. It is a good idea to put your grading scale on your syllabus.
Should I curve grades, and if so, how?
If typically curve my tests if the median is below a C (75% for my 10 point scale), and I have any doubts about the difficulty or length of the test. I prefer to curve individual assignments rather than curve the final course grade, because that allows the students to know where they stand at any point during the course, and it also avoids tricky decisions at the end of the semester. I recommend this guide to curving, written by a mathematician. I most often use the “Linear Curve” in which I fit a line to the points (x, y) = (100%, 100%) and (x, y) = (old median, 75%), where x is the raw score, converted to a percentage, and y is the curved score. This system keeps 100% at 100%, brings the actual median up to my desired median (75% for me, but it could be different). It gives students with lower scores more of a curve than students with higher scores. I have also used the return, rewrite, regrade method, especially for small classes.
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