What should happen when a TA tells lies?

[Kron3007]

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.

Yeah, we use an online system where I post all of the lecture slides, assignments, etc.  One major part of this is that this is where students also upload their work and the TAs post feedback and grades.  This makes it pretty easy to look over some of the TA feedback to make sure it is being done properly and they are providing the right level of feedback to the students.

I can imagine that some of the older professors have not embraced these systems, but it is crazy not to use something like this these days.  They save time and would avoid this type of issue.

Regardless, as Poly said this is definitely not your fault or problem.

[polly_mer]

I can imagine that some of the older professors have not embraced these systems, but it is crazy not to use something like this these days.  They save time and would avoid this type of issue.

The learning curve for the LMS can be appreciable and may not be worth it.  I first taught a lecture course with recording grading in my Excel sheet years after I'd been teaching and using the LMS to post things, have additional activities, and do some auto graded quizzes.  It was incredible how much less weekly work teaching was when it was only prepping a lecture by handwritten notes, grading one problem set per student per week, and entering grades by hand into an Excel sheet where a return put me into the next row to enter the next grade.  I saved more than an hour per week just by not having to deal with Blackboard's or Moodle's terrible grade entry interface.

However, now that I'm out of teaching and doing nearly everything as a group research effort, I love (LOVE!!) any electronic interface that keeps all the notes for the group together and lets all of us work on the same document/table/chart with autobackups...well, except for Sharepoint.  I still hate Sharepoint, but I hate it less than emailing documents with names like ourSharedReport_20201028_afterPolly_afterSusan_20201101 and routinely being out of date by working on the third-revision-ago.

[the_geneticist]

I can imagine that some of the older professors have not embraced these systems, but it is crazy not to use something like this these days.  They save time and would avoid this type of issue.

The learning curve for the LMS can be appreciable and may not be worth it.  I first taught a lecture course with recording grading in my Excel sheet years after I'd been teaching and using the LMS to post things, have additional activities, and do some auto graded quizzes.  It was incredible how much less weekly work teaching was when it was only prepping a lecture by handwritten notes, grading one problem set per student per week, and entering grades by hand into an Excel sheet where a return put me into the next row to enter the next grade.  I saved more than an hour per week just by not having to deal with Blackboard's or Moodle's terrible grade entry interface.

However, now that I'm out of teaching and doing nearly everything as a group research effort, I love (LOVE!!) any electronic interface that keeps all the notes for the group together and lets all of us work on the same document/table/chart with autobackups...well, except for Sharepoint.  I still hate Sharepoint, but I hate it less than emailing documents with names like ourSharedReport_20201028_afterPolly_afterSusan_20201101 and routinely being out of date by working on the third-revision-ago.

The learning curve is pretty steep, especially if you have a previous system that has been working just fine.  I am moderately skilled in Blackboard, but I spend HOURS in Spring term trying to figure out if some of the things I wanted to do were even possible (e.g. Can I set it up so that students can't take a quiz unless they've watched a video?  Yes, set it up as a sequential learning module; Can I give just one student an extension on an assignment that would normally disappear on the deadline? No.  You have to keep it available for all users or upgrade to the new Blackboard).

smallcleanrat, you don't need to worry any more about what the other TA did in Spring or how the instructor is handling the grades.  Just forward any emails up the chain of command.
At my university, a TA that failed at their contractual TA duties (yes, we make them sign a contract), would never be offered a teaching position again.  And they'd almost certainly be reported to the honor board for academic integrity failure. 

If you find yourself "spiraling" or fixating on that worry from Spring, try to find something else to occupy your brain space.  Play with Maestro, take a walk, do a mindless task, etc.

[smallcleanrat]

I can imagine that some of the older professors have not embraced these systems, but it is crazy not to use something like this these days.  They save time and would avoid this type of issue.

The learning curve for the LMS can be appreciable and may not be worth it.  I first taught a lecture course with recording grading in my Excel sheet years after I'd been teaching and using the LMS to post things, have additional activities, and do some auto graded quizzes.  It was incredible how much less weekly work teaching was when it was only prepping a lecture by handwritten notes, grading one problem set per student per week, and entering grades by hand into an Excel sheet where a return put me into the next row to enter the next grade.  I saved more than an hour per week just by not having to deal with Blackboard's or Moodle's terrible grade entry interface.

However, now that I'm out of teaching and doing nearly everything as a group research effort, I love (LOVE!!) any electronic interface that keeps all the notes for the group together and lets all of us work on the same document/table/chart with autobackups...well, except for Sharepoint.  I still hate Sharepoint, but I hate it less than emailing documents with names like ourSharedReport_20201028_afterPolly_afterSusan_20201101 and routinely being out of date by working on the third-revision-ago.

The learning curve is pretty steep, especially if you have a previous system that has been working just fine.  I am moderately skilled in Blackboard, but I spend HOURS in Spring term trying to figure out if some of the things I wanted to do were even possible (e.g. Can I set it up so that students can't take a quiz unless they've watched a video?  Yes, set it up as a sequential learning module; Can I give just one student an extension on an assignment that would normally disappear on the deadline? No.  You have to keep it available for all users or upgrade to the new Blackboard).

smallcleanrat, you don't need to worry any more about what the other TA did in Spring or how the instructor is handling the grades.  Just forward any emails up the chain of command.
At my university, a TA that failed at their contractual TA duties (yes, we make them sign a contract), would never be offered a teaching position again.  And they'd almost certainly be reported to the honor board for academic integrity failure. 

If you find yourself "spiraling" or fixating on that worry from Spring, try to find something else to occupy your brain space. Play with Maestro, take a walk, do a mindless task, etc.

Yup; I'm past the point where this is a major source of stress. At this point it's become more of a curiosity because I had never heard TA behavior this brash before. Still a little baffled as to why she didn't just say she wouldn't be able to grade finals because of stress or overwhelm. That would most likely have been forgiven, whereas this...wow.

I was also trying to imagine how I might have handled it if I were the instructor, so it was interesting to hear people's opinions here. At most there was some lingering irritation on my part that Other TA seemed to be able to just walk away from the situation without so much as an apology. The students in this class were a tremendously nice group of people who showed a lot of enthusiasm and effort, so I was kind of pissed off to hear this had happened to them. I hadn't considered it might be treated as an academic integrity issue, but that makes sense.