TA in a small class

[Hibush]

Moderating online discussion forum; keeping track of attendance/absences/excuses for absences/ marking whether coursework with an extension is handed in by the extension deadline.


Keeping CMS updated and well organized (SUCH a time-suck).


I'm a little bit concerned to hear you ask about non-busywork. The busywork is the most time-sucking part of running a class, and it's the part that a TA can help with the most. Give the TA the busywork!

Ugh, yes. It would make my life so much easier if I had TAs to do this kind of stuff. Even if all they were doing was checking the next week's worth of stuff on the CMS and making sure I hadn't screwed anything up, that would be a huge help.

Despite being drudge work, learning to do that well is actually pretty valuable for a grad student who intends to teach at the college level.

[Puget]

It's been a long time since I had a TA.

My impression is that having a good TA is great, but having a middling to bad TA can be more work for the professor.

My sense is this is more of a humanities issue. In STEM, I think people usually get to hire TAs, rather than having them assigned from on high. (Perhaps it's different with grad students.) I certainly decide who I'm going to hire, and so I won't take someone I don't think will be competent. It doesn't eliminate all problems, but they're relatively rare.

Not really true with grad student TAs most places-- you can express preferences, but it is a huge matching game to get all the students with TAships assigned to classes that fit their schedules, all while making sure certain students don't always get stuck with the harder ones -- I do not envy the staff person that has to do this.

That said, I think I've only had one TA who was more bother than she was worth. Even the not great ones can do the easy grading and other rote tasks.

[apl68]

Does your TA have an official "description of duties" for the class?  If not, sit down and put in writing what you expect them to do in the class, just to avoid any misunderstandings.
And you need to find out how many hours they are getting paid to do this.  Don't let them get paid for doing nothing!  If they are getting 10 hours of salary per week out of the TA appointment, then you get 10 hours of work from them.

In my long-ago experience as a TA this wasn't an issue.  You were paid for a few hours a week, and given far more work than you could do in that time.  We didn't even make the legal minimum by the time you counted all the uncompensated hours.

[marshwiggle]

It's been a long time since I had a TA.

My impression is that having a good TA is great, but having a middling to bad TA can be more work for the professor.

My sense is this is more of a humanities issue. In STEM, I think people usually get to hire TAs, rather than having them assigned from on high. (Perhaps it's different with grad students.) I certainly decide who I'm going to hire, and so I won't take someone I don't think will be competent. It doesn't eliminate all problems, but they're relatively rare.

Not really true with grad student TAs most places-- you can express preferences, but it is a huge matching game to get all the students with TAships assigned to classes that fit their schedules, all while making sure certain students don't always get stuck with the harder ones -- I do not envy the staff person that has to do this.

That said, I think I've only had one TA who was more bother than she was worth.

Just curious: How did she work out as a grad student? My hunch is that someone that difficult as a TA is not likely to be very successful at many things.

[Puget]

It's been a long time since I had a TA.

My impression is that having a good TA is great, but having a middling to bad TA can be more work for the professor.

My sense is this is more of a humanities issue. In STEM, I think people usually get to hire TAs, rather than having them assigned from on high. (Perhaps it's different with grad students.) I certainly decide who I'm going to hire, and so I won't take someone I don't think will be competent. It doesn't eliminate all problems, but they're relatively rare.

Not really true with grad student TAs most places-- you can express preferences, but it is a huge matching game to get all the students with TAships assigned to classes that fit their schedules, all while making sure certain students don't always get stuck with the harder ones -- I do not envy the staff person that has to do this.

That said, I think I've only had one TA who was more bother than she was worth.

Just curious: How did she work out as a grad student? My hunch is that someone that difficult as a TA is not likely to be very successful at many things.

You would be correct. (Fortunately not my grad student).

[the_geneticist]

It's been a long time since I had a TA.

My impression is that having a good TA is great, but having a middling to bad TA can be more work for the professor.

My sense is this is more of a humanities issue. In STEM, I think people usually get to hire TAs, rather than having them assigned from on high. (Perhaps it's different with grad students.) I certainly decide who I'm going to hire, and so I won't take someone I don't think will be competent. It doesn't eliminate all problems, but they're relatively rare.

Not really true with grad student TAs most places-- you can express preferences, but it is a huge matching game to get all the students with TAships assigned to classes that fit their schedules, all while making sure certain students don't always get stuck with the harder ones -- I do not envy the staff person that has to do this.

That said, I think I've only had one TA who was more bother than she was worth. Even the not great ones can do the easy grading and other rote tasks.

Yep.  Most of our undergraduate lab & discussion sections are taught by graduate TAs.  They get to put in their preferences, I get to put in my preferences, and then there are several committees who make the final appointments. 
Some TAs are fantastic - organized, reliable, enjoy teaching.  Others are just fine - they do exactly what they are asked & no more or they aren't particularly interested in teaching, but need the money.  Some are real stinkers - unreliable, don't bother to ask questions if they are uncertain about things, don't complete tasks on time (if at all).
Right now I have a few that don't bother to listen or ask questions about the course materials at our weekly meetings & then email me later to say that their students are "confused".   What they mean is they (the TA) don't understand anything about what they are teaching since they didn't bother to go through the materials before class.

[marshwiggle]

Right now I have a few that don't bother to listen or ask questions about the course materials at our weekly meetings & then email me later to say that their students are "confused".   What they mean is they (the TA) don't understand anything about what they are teaching since they didn't bother to go through the materials before class.

Sounds like some faculty as well, unfortunately.

[Biologist_]

...In any case, I tend to think that managing a TA for a small class would be more burdensome than just doing everything myself...Of course, I'd like the experience to contribute to the TA's professional development...

In addition to the practical suggestions from others...

If you're a newish faculty member or you haven't worked with a TA very often, try to think longer-term. Even if you don't save a lot of time working with a TA in this class, you will start to figure out what tasks you need to do yourself and what tasks you can delegate to the TA efficiently. Perhaps you will spend time writing rubrics or guidelines for the TA this time or grading examples of student work to help the TA calibrate their grading. If the same class runs with 50 students next year, those rubrics and examples will be ready so you can benefit from a TA without having to do that work on the front end. Even if you're not teaching the same class or the same topic next year, the general notion of how to use the TA's labor will carry over.

[Dismal]

Covid! I'd love to have a TA to handle interacting with the students who can't come to class due to quarantine or sickness. Opening up the zoom link, recording the presentation - I'd be thrilled to have someone to do this. Also making sure the missing students are hooked up to participate in small group discussions. Our students are all masked, so I had my TA last semester set up a plan for all students to do video introductions and load their short intros to Canvas. TA set this up. Even in classes where I want to grade, I sometimes have my TA grade as well -- one semester my TA focused on a few particular things like thesis statement and proper use of citations and I could echo some of this but add more comments as well.

[ergative]

Covid! I'd love to have a TA to handle interacting with the students who can't come to class due to quarantine or sickness. Opening up the zoom link, recording the presentation - I'd be thrilled to have someone to do this. Also making sure the missing students are hooked up to participate in small group discussions. Our students are all masked, so I had my TA last semester set up a plan for all students to do video introductions and load their short intros to Canvas. TA set this up. Even in classes where I want to grade, I sometimes have my TA grade as well -- one semester my TA focused on a few particular things like thesis statement and proper use of citations and I could echo some of this but add more comments as well.

Yes, of course! All of those extra steps that go with digital teaching can be handled by a TA. (And, indeed, that sort of technical training is vitally important for TAs to acquire. Colleagues who need help recording lectures make extra work for everyone. I have colleagues who retired (one of the mid-term! rather than deal with digital teaching in autumn 2020.)

When I was giving large online lectures last year, I had a TA moderate the student questions. I set up the chat function in zoom so that the questions all went to the TA, which meant I didn't get distracted by them and other students couldn't natter on in chat to each other, and then when I paused for questions the TA had them all collated and ready to report. It avoided those awful long pauses, because the TA wasn't shy about speaking up, and it protected students who were afraid of asking stupid questions, because the TA anonymized them.  Made lecturing on zoom so much easier.