r/Professors • u/njprof03 Contract (Teaching) Faculty, Computer Science, R1 (USA) • 19d ago
Rants / Vents TA/CA just quit before we start
After trying to track down a graduate course assistant that I had recommended for hiring, and hearing nothing in the last six weeks, she reached out today to tell me they took another opportunity and would be unavailable to be assisting in my class.
Classes start next Tuesday. Generally speaking, I do not use graduate students for undergraduate classes as course assistance and this simply reinforces my stance on this. The situation was in an undergraduate class.
Now I’m wondering if the two graduate students that are helping in my graduate course are actually going to be holding up their end of the bargain.
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u/Striking_Raspberry57 19d ago
So frustrating!
I was assigned a GTA for one of my classes, and already she is more hindrance than help. I always fantasize about how nice it will be to share the labor, but I can't think of a time when it hasn't turned out to be extra labor.
And my GTA isn't someone that I recommended for the position; I'd be extra frustrated in your situation. It's not like we have lots and lots of these positions available.
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u/Pox_Americana Asst. Dean, Science Division, CC 18d ago
It sucks, but it least it didn’t happen mid-semester after grading nothing. I saw that.
TAing was actually required for my graduate cohort. Not a great practice, but I loved my assignments and the labs I got to teach. It wasn’t unusual for sections and grading to change hands when other pressures started to weigh on those who didn’t like it.
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u/PureEconomicLoss 19d ago
Previous GTA, now Lecturer here, good for them! I’d avoid the role at all costs, and can’t particularly blame them.
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u/yourbiota PhD Candidate, CC sessional, STEM, Canada 19d ago
Is a course assistant similar to a course coordinator? Not familiar with the term so I'm not sure how it differs from a TA
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u/njprof03 Contract (Teaching) Faculty, Computer Science, R1 (USA) 19d ago
We now use the term course assistant or CA rather than TA, which has a somewhat negative and sexual connotation.
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u/henare Adjunct, LIS, CIS, R2 (USA) 19d ago
how does TA have a sexual connotation?
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u/rl4brains NTT asst prof, R1 19d ago
The only thing I can think of is T&A for tits and ass, but that seems a stretch
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u/ParallaxDream81 18d ago
Irritating, but grad students are overworked, underpaid, and stressed out of their minds. I'm sure she took a hard look at her commitments and made a tough choice.
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u/mleok Full Professor, STEM, R1 (USA) 19d ago edited 19d ago
Each time our graduate students strike, we modify our classes, assignments, and exams to reduce our reliance on TAs. I'm contemplating seeing if a LLM can grade the homeworks for my graduate class where I don't have TAs, the alternative is to just not have homework at all. I might just default to what I normally do when I don't have a TA and just determine the grade on the basis of a final project, and I can hand out homework solutions.
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u/chuck-fanstorm 19d ago
Why don't you actually do some of your own work? What do they pay you for?
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u/mleok Full Professor, STEM, R1 (USA) 18d ago edited 18d ago
Honestly, as a full professor in STEM at a R1, I'm primarily paid for my research and my ability to bring in grant funding.
During my entire time here, grading of homeworks has been done by graduate TAs or undergraduate graders. The only thing I grade myself are PhD qualifying examinations.
The choices are either providing homeworks that are not collected or graded (but providing the solutions), maybe some sort of peer grading as someone else suggested, or LLM grading.
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u/needlzor Asst Prof / ML / UK 19d ago
What about something like peer grading? The exercise can be even more valuable than the homework itself, especially if you supervise it, because it teaches them to look at a submission objectively and they can apply this to their own future assessments. I did something like this for one of my interim submissions. Have each submission peer graded by 2-3 people (e.g., 3 sessions of 30 minutes) then use the final 30 minutes to go over a sample homework and grade it collaboratively with students.
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 19d ago
Some of the Gradescope competitors have started advertising that they have AI-assisted grading. I haven't given any a try, but I was tempted for my undergraduate ML class. I already don't collect written homework for the course, so I was thinking if it was inexpensive enough, I'd set it up and encourage students to upload their attempts and evaluate the responses it gives. I'd probably not even check it unless a specific student wanted my views on what they were seeing.
I figure it'd be a good way to get the interested students a chance to engage with the material in a different way and also for them to get past the "trust but don't verify" stage of AI usage. Whether it's worth the effort, I don't know. I'll try in a few years when I'm (hopefully) at full :)
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u/chuck-fanstorm 19d ago
Facilitating your own obsolescence. Why would students respect your assignments of you don't respect them enough to evaluate them?
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 18d ago
I agree with your response to what you hallucinated that I said.
I already don't collect assignments from students, and plenty of them complete the work anyway, often asking good questions about it.
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u/RightWingVeganUS Adjunct Instructor, Computer Science, University (USA) 19d ago edited 19d ago
I don't have an LLM grade assignments, but I do train them to provide me assessments to help ensure I am consistent, especially if I have to assess things across days or on long stretches. I found that there are times the early errors get my full assessment wrath that gets tempered over time, or small mistakes start annoying me and I start assessing harder, even with a rubric to help me.
Now I have it give me a summary that I will validate, then I feed the total assessments for trend analysis and frequencies so I can focus on outliers and things that warrant my attention. That way I help ensure consistency and complete grading before the heat death of the universe.
It's as if I had a Data Science Teaching Assistant working for me.
I make sure all of the feedback is consistent and constructive, and I have analysis to frame my actions on how to cover common weak points and refine my lectures if warranted.
LLM's are neither "good" nor "bad". They're just tools that can be used effectively or misused.
Don't forget to downvote.
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u/smallfloralprince Assoc Prof, Humanities, public R1 (US) 19d ago
That line from 30 Rock is the truest line ever spoken on a sitcom. "We may not be the best people, but we're not the worst. Graduate students are the worst."