What should happen when a TA tells lies?

[smallcleanrat]

Reaearch_prof's post on the TA that doesn't care enough to do the basic job requirements spurred me to post about this. I wrote about some of this story in other threads but more as venting.

Here, I'm mostly curious to hear opinions and to know what other faculty would do if this happened to them. There isn't much I can actually do at this point. It's just a weird situation and I wondered how different people would deal with it.

I was one of two TAs for an undergrad course taught this year back in Spring. Professor did not learn until after term had ended that Other TA had lied repeatedly both to him and her students. One example was telling the professor she had returned feedback to all her students on their midterm papers. Weeks after she said this, students were emailing the prof to ask whether they were ever going to get their feedback. Prof just forwarded these to me and Other TA. This also happened RE: homework feedback. I think he might have been too preoccupied with other work to register the significance of those messages.

Most egregious offense was after finals while we were supposed to be finalizing grades and turning them in to the registrar. Other TA tells our prof she is almost finished grading final term papers for her students and will send grades within a couple of days. This is the last either of us will hear from her.

After the registrar's deadline had passed, prof only had grades for my students. Other TA stops responding to any of his messages. He starts contacting her students himself only to find Other TA had told them they did not have to turn in their final term paper because they were all getting automatic A's due to the stressful impacts of the pandemic/protests/etc.

Prof not only had to deal with a lot of back and forth with the registrar to figure out how to grant students belated incompletes, he also contacted Other TA's students to let them know they actually do need to turn in that term paper unless they petition to pass/fail and they have sufficient points to pass without it. Students have until end of this term to hand in any missing coursework. Some of the students have been unresponsive and are in danger of very poor grades if they do not do this.

If this had happened at your institution:

1) Do you think it likely the solution would have been to notify the students they still have to turn in additional work despite the fact that their TA lied to them? Or do you think the term paper requirement would be waived since this was not primarily the students' fault? Only issue I would have is that would be unfair to the students in my sections who *did* complete the paper requirement (a significant amount of work).

I'm worried about the unresponsive students not getting their overdue work or their pass/fail petitions submitted in time. But there is only so much we can do to chase after them.

2) What consequences would Other TA be likely to face? In this case, there don't seem to be any. Term is already over so too late to fire. She's already been paid for the whole term. She has completed the teaching requirements for her program so blackballing her from future TA jobs isn't likely to have much impact.

I wouldn't want to see anything overly punitive happen to her. Maybe she had a lot going on and the stress just got to her. I don't know. But it irks me that it seems she won't have to so much as own up to it. It seems that as long as she keeps ignoring the prof's messages, she doesn't even have to face being confronted about her lying. She lies and everyone *except* her has consequences as a result.

Maybe that shouldn't bother me, but it does.

[research_prof]

Long story, short: The prof is responsible for whatever goes wrong. I always check what my TA does and make sure he does things on time. As a matter of fact, this has happened with my TA too--him not responding to emails from students and then the students emailing me and blaming me about the fact that the TA did not reply.

As I said above, whatever happens, the prof will be responsible for it and this will be reflected in the student evaluations. Well, if your university is public, to some extent, this TA has misled the university about doing their job properly and has gotten taxpayers' money. I am not a lawyer, but it might be even a fraud against the state (if your university gets funded directly by the state for example).

In practice, I do not think anything will happen.

[smallcleanrat]

As I said above, whatever happens, the prof will be responsible for it and this will be reflected in the student evaluations.

At our university, student evaluations are submitted before the end of finals weeks. So by the time Other TA's students were informed about the term paper lie, it would have been too late for this incident to be reflected in evaluations.

Also, TA's are evaluated separately from the professor or the course overall. So as long as students blamed Other TA specifically for lack of midterm/homework feedback, I'm not sure how much a negative review would affect the professor (except perhaps reflecting a poor hiring choice).

As the professor, how would you have supervised a situation like this? Ask the TA to CC you on midterm and homework feedback to the students? Check in with the students during term to ask how things are going? I can imagine doing this if you already suspect or know the TA's work is subpar, but I have a hard time imagining any of my professors here showing that level of oversight to every TA as a matter of course. Maybe that's the kind of thing that depends on department culture?

[spork]

It's the professor's responsibility to supervise TAs. If students find a TA's behavior problematic, they need to complain to the professor, the department chair, a program director, or a dean.

[fishbrains]

Trying to tell students after they have received a valid final grade for a course (not valid to you, but to the institution) that they need to go back and complete some kind of term paper after the grade has already been issued wouldn't fly anywhere I've been (which is admittedly pretty limited). The prof screwed up big-time, and just needs to eat it--unfair as it all is.

Also, there may not seem to be immediate consequences, but this kind of behavior usually comes back to bite a person like the TA in the butt. At some point, the TA is going to apply somewhere and need a reference, or the prof or the dean or the VP or other people who end up sorting through this clusterf*ck will receive a casual inquiry about the person, or you may be in a position where someone asks you about her.

[Caracal]

Not sure if this would ever happen in practice, but this seems extreme enough that it could warrant dismissal from the program. This goes beyond just doing a bad job of teaching. If someone is willing to straight up lie to a professor to avoid doing work, I imagine they would also falsify evidence or results  if it seemed convenient to do so.

[smallcleanrat]

Trying to tell students after they have received a valid final grade for a course (not valid to you, but to the institution) that they need to go back and complete some kind of term paper after the grade has already been issued wouldn't fly anywhere I've been (which is admittedly pretty limited). The prof screwed up big-time, and just needs to eat it--unfair as it all is.

Makes sense to me, but it wasn't my decision. The professor told me some of the students were pretty angry about being told they have to write a paper after all. Completely understandable, even if you are given a significant amount of time in which to do it. I know I'd have a hard time trying to concentrate on a paper for a class I thought I had completed months ago; my mind would have moved on to other things.

But since Other TA promised them all automatic A's, if the students were granted the grades as promised what do you think should happen to my students? Would it be fair to grant them the same even though they did not get that promise? It wouldn't seem right for a student who did complete their term paper to get a lower grade than a student who didn't.

I'm trying to imagine being in the professor's shoes, and it's not immediately obvious to me how he could have prevented this issue (or caught and corrected it in time). If the TA tells you she has received the term papers and is almost done grading, and then ghosts you when you ask any questions, what's your next move?

I had suspicions earlier in the term that she was not being completely honest based on discrepancies between things she would say in our biweekly meetings with the professor. Should I have said something to the professor? These were just suspicions, so I didn't want to make any accusations as I thought they might seem petty or paranoid. And the professor obviously favored Other TA, so I'm not sure he would have listened to me anyway.

I've heard plenty of stories about incompetent TAs and TAs who get overwhelmed or lazy and don't get things done, but I've not heard of something like this. What goes through someone's head when they tell a brazen lie that they must know will be discovered at some point in the near future?

[Hegemony]

In my program, there would have been hell to pay for the TA, and probably dismissal from the program. If that had been my TA, that would have been the end of that TA.

As for the poor students, the prof would have cobbled together some makeshift compensation, ideally one that did not disadvantage the overlooked students, although some profs are better at this than others.

[polly_mer]

None of this is your problem, smallcleanrat.  Let me repeat: this is not your problem to solve; prioritize what you need to do in your own life.


Now, as an intellectual exercise, the professor and chair are going to have to sort this out and likely that's bad for the TA regarding progress in the program and any future ability to be paid by the program, even if the official teaching portion is done.  As Hegemony wrote, dismissal would be on the table for something this major.  I could also see someone being required to take a health leave of absence and then quietly not being allowed back.

I agree with Fishbrains that after final grades have been recorded, those grades generally stand unless individual students can be shown to have cheated.  Recording an I when students think they are done and have an A or at least a Pass would be grounds for valid grade challenges at places I've been.  I could also see lawsuits coming out of it if the students had reason to believe that the TA really was assigning the final grade. 

I am unclear on how a TA could just not grade work or could change the assignments if the TA wasn't basically teaching the course with minimal oversight.  Either the professor dropped the ball here by not checking on the TA's work regularly in a shared grade book or the TA had the authority to make changes. 

What needs to happen for the students depends on why students took this course.  A gen ed checkbox should just transition to a Pass and be done. 

A prerequisite course is more problematic.  However, students not responding to departmental-level emails for a prerequisite course also solves itself.  The department only has to remediate students who want to continue in the program and now have some missing prerequisite material in one specific section of one course.  If students don't have any missing prerequisite material, but only are missing assignments, then that's also a problem that solves itself with a pass grade.

[Caracal]

In my program, there would have been hell to pay for the TA, and probably dismissal from the program. If that had been my TA, that would have been the end of that TA.

As for the poor students, the prof would have cobbled together some makeshift compensation, ideally one that did not disadvantage the overlooked students, although some profs are better at this than others.

In the hierarchy of fairness avoiding screwing over students for something not their fault is more important than fairness for students not involved.

Last semester, I messed up on inputting grades for one student. He wrote me to confirm that he needed only to get a B on the last exam to get an A in the class. I looked, too quickly, at the grades and said that was right. When it came time to put the final grades together I realized I had screwed up and actually with a B on the last exam, his grade should have been a B, not an A.

I just ate it and gave him the A. If I hadn't messed up the grades, maybe he would have put more time into studying and got an A. Seems like a similar situation.

[mythbuster]

In our program your AWOL TA would be expelled from the graduate program for the lying.
Years ago, when I was in grad school, we had some incidents with TAs creating leeway for themselves. Nothing as egregious as you describe, still bad cases of TAs feeling they had more independence regarding course content than they should.
This led to the creation of a document of work responsibilities that TAs signed as part of their contract. It included the possible ramifications of NOT doing the work up to par.  As I remember it started with a group meeting with TA, Course Instructor, and Research Advisor and progressed up to non-payment of stipend and possible expulsion.

Sounds like your department needs a similar document, with some teeth to it.

[fishbrains]

I just can't help wondering what kinds of legal problems would arise if students passed a course with an "A" by completing all of the assignments that were given to them in the class, and then the College went back and changed the final grade for the course from an "A" to an "F" (or other lower grade) because the students didn't complete some essay that wasn't even required for the course at the time they took it.

It's not fair to the OP's students, but that's not really a concern for the students who have already been assigned the "A."

It sounds like the fix is going to cause more concerns than the original mistake.

[Kron3007]

This is a messy situation, but as others have mentioned it is not your problem nor was it your fault (at all).

At the end of the day, the professor should have been checking in a little closer.  I completely understand how it happened, but it was their lack of oversight that let it happen and they are ultimately responsible.  Personally, I always spot check a couple assignments that my TAs have graded.  I do this just to see that the TA is grading appropriately (relative to the instructions I gave the students), but it would have identified this issue early on.

Once a situation like this is created, there is really no good way out.  If I found myself in that position, I may make the assignment a bonus assignment and award all of your students the bonus marks and allow the others to submit one if they wanted.

[smallcleanrat]

So I suppose a good oversight solution would have been to create an online grade book where TAs could upload assignment scores every week and the prof could check regularly to make sure we were keeping up. I did suggest this to him early in the term but he said he didn't know how to do that, and that keeping records in our own Excel spreadsheets would be fine. He's been teaching a longtime so I was surprised he didn't seem at all familiar with the online system.

We TAs didn't have the ability to submit official grades. Prof was asking us to email him our individual grading spreadsheets so he could submit final grades to the registrar. So Other TA's probably just had blanks until prof worked with the registrar to grant them all Incomplete status. But in Caracal's example, even when the student was just misinformed (nothing involving changing already registered grades) Caracal chose to grade according to what the student was told.

Come to think of it, prof was aware that Other TA was not at every lecture (something he told us TAs needed to do). And he chewed me out after Lecture 1 because he had sent me a text asking whether his slides were showing up on Zoom and I didn't respond. When I said I had turned my ringer off so it wouldn't distract from lecture, he said "I need you guys to be responsive!" Made sure to have phone in my lap on vibrate from then on, but noticed I was often the only one responding to texts addressed to both of us. So that could have been another clue.

He was trying to take it easy on her because it was her quals term, so maybe he let things like that slide.

Yeah; I'm starting to feel less guilty about not diving deeper into trying to be part of fixing this mess.

[polly_mer]

This is not your problem.  Just watch it unfold and focus on things that are your responsibility.