Informatics 1 vacancies

Informatics 1 is the largest course in the School of Informatics and is taken by all students studying for an Informatics degree. For 2010/11 INF1 will run as four courses:

Course Title	Lecturer	Semester	Additional Information
INF1 - Computation and Logic	Dave Robertson	1
INF1 - Data and Analysis	Ian Stark	2
INF1 - Functional Programming	Phil Wadler	1	will consider appointing a TA or Tutors that don't know Haskell but are familiar with functional programming (e.g., ML, Caml, Scheme, or the like).
INF1 - Object-Oriented Programming	Ewan Klein	2

The course organiser is Ewan Klein.

The exam assessement structure is as follows:

INF1-FP and INF1-OP will each have one mid-Semester class exam, contributing to the course total, and one end-of-Semester programming exam
INF1-CL and INF1-DA will each have one end-of-Semester exam

We have vacancies for teaching assistants, tutors and demonstrators.

Teaching assistants

We have vacancies for four part-time teaching assistants; one for each of the four courses.

Teaching Assistants (TAs) support the lecturers and with a variety of duties to help the smooth running of the course. It is anticipated that these duties will be as follows (but will be subject to ongoing review).

Duty	Number of Hours	When
Course material preparation *	50 hrs	50 during the course (approx.)
Tutor	1 tutorial per week	All 10 weeks of the course
Lab Demonstrator	2 hrs per week	All 10 weeks of the course
Office hours	2 hrs per week	All 10 weeks of the course
Marking (class exam or mid-Semester assignment)	25 hrs	mid Semester
Marking (exams)	25 hrs	end Semester

* e.g. setting practical exercises and writing tutorial exercise sheets and solutions; designing and preparing course materials; helping with web publishing; systems.

Teaching Assistants are expected to have a close involvement and keen interest in the running of the course. They should have some academic background in the appropriate topic. An enthusiasm for teaching is an essential prerequisite: the lecturers would like to work closely with TAs and encourage their ideas and input to improve the course while it runs. TAs will also be expected to assist with the support and management of Inf1 demonstrators and markers.

Hours and pay: Teaching Assistants will be given a contract for up to 160 hours paid at grade UE06, currently upwards of £12.50/hr.

Eligibility: We expect Teaching Assistants to be postgraduate students who seek a source of funding and are already within the School of Informatics. A Teaching Assistant post could provide excellent experience for those who are considering teaching or training roles in the future.

Tutors

Tutors have a close contact and responsibility for the students' learning. You will take a small group of around 12 students and give them tuition and guidance on the content of the course. INF1 students will continue to have two tutorials each week; one for the programming part of the course (FP or OP) and one for the theory part of the course (CL or DA). Tutors can apply to be 'programming' tutors, or 'theory' tutors, or tutors for both kinds of tutorials. Note that tutors appointed to the INF1-OP part of the course will work in a lab based environment, but be paid at the standard double-time tutoring rate.

Course web pages will detail the progress of the course. Specific exercises will be set for each tutorial and all students are expected to prepare these prior to the tutorial session as they will be marked by the tutor or by peer marking (whereby each student marks the work of another student led by the tutor) as part of the tutorial.

As tutor, you are expected to respond to students' individual needs. All students should be encouraged to participate actively in the tutorial - the most enjoyable and productive tutorials are those which involve good two way interaction with and between the tutor and students. Tutors are also required to monitor attendance and general progress of students.

For more information on tutoring, see the University Code of Practice on Tutoring and Demonstrating . The Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment also run introductory courses for first time tutors, which all first time tutors must attend. Informatics may also run in-house tutorial training sessions which less experienced tutors will be expected to attend. INF1-FP tutors must attend the Haskell training session.

Postgraduate tutors may be asked to perform additional duties as specified by the course lecturer, unless exceptional, these will be paid as part of the standard double-time rate. INF1 marking is considered to be an exceptional duty, and will be paid as additional work (staff tutors are exempt from this marking).

Hours and pay: Tutorials are 50 minutes long (although you are paid for one hour of contact time and one hour of preparation time) and slots are scheduled at times to suit students and tutors. All tutorials will take place in the central area, in and around George Square. Additionally tutors may be asked to work on the INF1 Helpline, or between 4-6pm on the INFBase, for which they may claim extra paid hours.

Eligibility: Tutors must be postgraduate students, researchers, or teaching staff.

Applications: Please send a brief CV, with a description of your relevant experience and details of the skills you could bring to the job, to <tutor-applications@inf.ed.ac.uk> Usually a tutor would take 1 or 2 tutorial groups. There will be 20-30 tutoring slots available. Please indicate how many tutorial groups you are interested in and whether you are interested in tutoring on the theory or programming parts of each course.

Laboratory Demonstrators

The main requirement of this job is to help students with their practical exercises which will be set by lecturers each week. A secondary requirement is to help maintain the orderly running of the lab. At the time of writing (July 2010) the precise format of Inf1 labs for 2010-11 is still not finalised. Nevertheless, demonstrators will be expected to attend dedicated Inf1 lab sessions of up to 3 hours duration, so they are available for students seeking help, and also to pro-actively offer assistance to students.

Informatics 1 demonstrators are expected to help students with both of the Informatics 1 courses each semeser. That is, in Semester 1, demonstrators should be able to offer help with both the INF1-FP and INF1-CL courses. In Semester 2, demonstrators should be able to offer help with both the INF1-OP and INF1-DA courses. Demonstrators recruited to work on INF1-OP will be expected to participate in drop-in labs and also in scheduled lab sessions (normally one hour per day); they will be paid at double-time for the scheduled sessions, to take account of the preparatory work required.

Demonstrating is an enjoyable job for somebody who is friendly and approachable, and has a certain amount of patience with beginner programmers. Some experience of the Linux/KDE environment would be useful, but could be gained early on. A good knowledge of Haskell is required for Semester 1 and Java is required for Semester 2. Demonstrators should read over the lecture notes each week.

For more information on the job responsibilities, see the University Code of Practice: Demonstrators' Rights and Responsibilities

Hours and pay: Demonstrating slots are available Mon, Fri 3-5pm and Tue-Thu 2-5pm (for drop-in labs - 2 demonstrators on duty). These hours are provisional (July 2010) and may change.

Pay is at grade UE06, currently upwards of £12.50/hr.

Eligibility: Usually demonstrators are postgraduate students, or responsible UG4 students (exceptionally 3rd years) with the right background. All demonstrators must attend training a demonstrator training session and INF1-CL demonstrators must attend a Haskell training session.

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