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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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GUOLONG: Good morning, students.

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STUDENTS: Good morning, Mr. Su.

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GUOLONG: Can anyone tell
me the answer, please?

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STUDENTS: I can!

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GUOLONG: Is everything clear?

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STUDENTS: Yes, perfectly clear.

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GUOLONG: Are there
any other questions?

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STUDENTS: No, no questions.

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GUOLONG: I will
see you on Tuesday.

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STUDENTS: Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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NARRATOR: Wait a minute.

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That's not what
happens in real life.

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Actual MIT undergraduates
often come to class

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on three hours of sleep.

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GUOLONG: Can anyone tell
me the answer, please?

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NARRATOR: Sometimes
they're afraid to volunteer

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what might be the wrong answer.

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GUOLONG: [INAUDIBLE] lecture by
considering a simple example.

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NARRATOR: They're not
always paying attention.

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STUDENT: What?

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NARRATOR: And they might
not understand what

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you thought you explained well.

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GUOLONG: Is everything clear?

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STUDENTS: Not really.

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NARRATOR: So how can you
be a successful TA at MIT?

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Try thinking of your
class as a popular website

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that visitors come back
to again and again.

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What makes a website
user-friendly?

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CAROL: User-friendly to
me means that in order

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to complete the task at
hand, the website is designed

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in a way that's logical.

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CHANDLER: Yeah.

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I feel like format, just
a clean, simple format

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is really nice.

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ADRIAN: It's not
cluttered and messy.

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BILLY: The most important things
for a user-friendly website

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is a clear interface, simple
categories, and a search

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option.

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ADRIAN: And accessible language.

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CHANDLER: So being able to
find things very efficiently

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and quickly is definitely
pretty important.

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ADRIAN: I think it's
more user-friendly when

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you can actually understand
what they want you to do

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and where things are.

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CAROL: Being able to
find the right things

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in a way that's easy.

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NARRATOR: In other words,
a user-friendly website.

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GUOLONG: Should be the
designed with a thinking that

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to make the user feel
happy and easy, instead

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of making the computer engineers
to feel happy and easy.

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NARRATOR: What if the
engineer is a teacher

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and the user a student?

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ADRIAN: The main
principle of accessibility

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should be the same.

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CHANDLER: A website
should be simple, clean,

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and also, like,
should have where

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you want to go right away.

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And a teacher should be able to
judge where the students need,

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what the students need to
where the students want

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to go and adapt in that way.

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BILLY: I guess like the Search
button would be asking the TA

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or asking the professor
for more information.

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ADRIAN: It's not
necessarily that everyone

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is going to be your friend.

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But it's more about
being easy to understand.

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BILLY: In terms of having
a clear interface, just

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a simple structure of
the class, something

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that students can expect, like
the lectures go the same way,

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the recitation go the
same way, and something

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that students can expect.

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NARRATOR: So organization
and predictability

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are key to the
user-friendly class.

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CAROL: Planning that way
in a logical session, where

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you, like, review things
that are necessary

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and then going into
problem, practice problems,

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and then going over what
were the right answers,

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I thought that was, like, pretty
user-friendly for a student.

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Because it was a good review
and then good practice.

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So it was, like, logical.

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TA: For today's recitation,
we're going to do--

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NARRATOR: The TA acts as
a guide for the students.

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BILLY: It's important to, well,
explain the learning objectives

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of the class early on.

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CHANDLER: Have just,
like, an air of confidence

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and be able to direct
the recitation.

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BILLY: A very big expectation
in a recitation is for the TA

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to provide us with the big
picture of the concepts.

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NARRATOR: The TA is
approachable and supportive.

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ADRIAN: You need to feel that
you can approach them and ask

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questions without any problem.

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NARRATOR: And knowledgeable.

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CAROL: The most
important thing for a TA

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is that they have to have a very
solid understanding of what's

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going on in the material.

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NARRATOR: But is
knowledge enough?

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BILLY: Unfortunately,
it's not enough to simply

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be knowledgeable
about the subject.

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It's the way you present it,
the way you communicate it.

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CHANDLER: They're
all very smart.

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I know they all know what
they're talking about.

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So it's just how they can
communicate that to us.

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NARRATOR: So what is
good communication

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in the user-friendly classroom?

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CHANDLER: The biggest thing
that came across my mind

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was definitely, like, how
they answered questions

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and the feedback
they got the students

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and how they responded to that.

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ADRIAN: It's not the same
when they read a paper,

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and they just write the
problem in the board

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and solve the problem
than explaining,

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why is it going like this?

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Or why is it working like this?

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CAROL: I think just a
willingness to clarify

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is very, very important.

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BILLY: Being patient and
being able to explain

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the same concept
in different ways.

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ADRIAN: And they can
actually explain it to you

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at a basic undergrad level.

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NARRATOR: In the next videos, we
will learn communication skills

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and strategies to meet
students' expectations

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and create a
user-friendly classroom.