<p>Member “janie” mentioned in another thread that her daughter was a TA as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>Does anyone else have experience with undergraduate TAsyour child being one, you being one, or you or your child learning from one? What are the pros and cons? And how common is this? I don’t remember having any undergraduate TAs at all.</p>
<p>How does one become a TA as an undergraduate? Are there some schools that do this as a matter of policy and some that don’t?</p>
<p>There have been discussions on this topic on the Parent Forum in the past and you may wish to do a search. I posted on previous threads. </p>
<p>My D was a TA in her senior year at Brown for a course she had been in previously. Most of the TAs for the course were graduate students, but she and maybe another undergrad was also a TA. The professor taught the course. Then there were sections for discussion and these sections were led by TAs. Each week, the TAs and the professor had a meeting to discuss what was going to be done during the sections each week. I believe each TA took turns coming up with some of the plans for sections and these were gone over in the meetings with the professor and then each TA led their own sections. The TAs also graded exams, but the professor determined course grades. My D loved being a TA and frankly, was good at it and the students seemed to love her. She was a leader in her department and received the highest award in that dept. at graduation. She knew as much about the subject as the grad students who conceivably could have been one year older than her and had never taken the course as an undergrad as she had. She had to apply to be a TA and the professor chose her. He also wrote a rec for her for grad school.</p>
<p>I should add she was also a TA for another course (French) which was not her major (as above). In the case of French, she led weekly sessions for a lower level French course that were meant as practice of using French in discussions, which were required for those in the course. This was not really a lesson plan but more someone leading “talk” in French as practice.</p>
<p>In both cases, she was paid.</p>
<p>The above sounds like an exceptional student in an exceptional situation- the poster gets my respect from her many posts over recent years. In general I would think a college senior would be busy taking grad level or other advanced courses in the major instead of taking time to teach a subject already known. I would also like to think a school would have enough grad students/faculty to handle teaching jobs. Not a common situation.</p>
<p>It is very common at LAC’s where, for obvious reasons, there typically are no graduate students. Unlike graduate student TAs who often lead sections of large lecture classes, undergraduate TAs are mostly serving in lab sections of basic science courses (for example, a senior chemistry major helping out in the laboratory for introductory chemistry).</p>
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<p>Ah, good point. That hadn’t occurred to me.</p>
<p>At my (undergrad-only) school TAs exist (under a variety of other names), but their work is rather limited in scope. In the sciences they often run help sessions or problem sessions of introductory classes, sometimes in addition to grading the students’ work.</p>
<p>^^^I don’t think it’s “very common” at LACs. I don’t think TAs are used at most LACs for regular classes at all.</p>
<p>A lab helper might be a different situation, and perhaps more common.</p>
<p>Undergrad students at Swarthmore grade other student’s work? Is this work objective, like math problems, or are you talking about grading written assignments?</p>
<p>Sometimes it can be a true blessing. In some fields at some universities, reality is that most of the graduate students speak English as a second language. Some are hard to understand. </p>
<p>When you get an American senior, there’s no language barrier. That can be a huge advantage. </p>
<p>My kid has a friend who TAd several undergrad math classes at Harvard starting sophomore year. He “unofficially” tutored a lot of kids in math in high school. He was just genuinely outstanding in explaining math concepts. He did go on to grad school–and won several awards for best teaching as a Ph.D. candidate at a different university. </p>
<p>He was very advanced in math–taking graduate courses from the get go. So, he definitely knew the material. He was a native English speaker and he really had a knack for explaining difficult concepts. </p>
<p>So, don’t assume it’s always a bad thing.</p>
<p>S1 was an SI, Supplemental Instructor, for 3 years as an undergrad in Chemistry for Engineers class. He sat in during the class lecture, then ran the study/problems sessions. Note that those sessions were voluntary, but lots of students attended, especially the final exam sessions. </p>
<p>He was approached by current SI’s his frosh year, then took over his soph year after approval of professor, etc. Loved the job. This was at Case Western Reserve, a major research institution.</p>
<p>The big advantage of LAC’s is supposedly the professor contact and no grad student teaching. Does this mean science courses at big U’s with grad student TA’s might be better??? Hmm…</p>
<p>My kid is a TA in organic chemistry. She’s had a great time and the questionnaire from the students seem to show they are quite satisfied. One student did say that a graduate student in chemistry would provide a better understanding of the subject and how it is integrated into other chemistry courses since my daughter is not a chemistry major.</p>
<p>Two of my kids were TAs as undergrads - one at a top research university, another at a top LAC.</p>
<p>Students who become TAs are usually the ones who excelled in the class they are TAing for, and are chosen by the professor (+ sometimes the department head).
Depending on their responsibilities (and probably depending on the school in question), they do (or do not) get some training for the job.
The duties can span from being a section leader to just being a homework grader.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure that it is one of the best jobs you can get wrt to the benefit to the TA.
The benefit for the other students would greatly depend on the quality of the TAs who get selected.</p>
<p>I believe that most schools employ undergrads as TAs (I know for sure that Stanford, Swarthmore, Wash U, and MIT do…) I think it can be very beneficial for all involved, as long as the TAs are adequately prepared and wisely chosen, and as long as their duties do not exceed what can be reasonably expected from undergrads.</p>
<p>^^^ Something to ask about if it’s a concern. Son has only had profs teaching/grading at Pomona. No TAs. I don’t think I’d be too happy if I thought he was being taught by
undergrads, even for sections, unless they were just casual study sections that were in no way part of the course requirements.
It’s not that the TAs would do a bad job. That’s not the issue. The problem for me is that small sections are an opportunity for the students to interact with the professor.</p>
<p>Wis75,
From my (limited) experience, the TAs at LAC have much more limited duties than the TAs at universities (both graduate and undergrad)</p>
<p>moonchild,
Yes, TAs at Swarthmore grade other students’ work. They do not grade papers though.
Also, if a student disagrees with the grade, s/he can always talk to the grader or to the professor about it right away. It is nothing like a university grading by TAs in that regard.
The TAs do not “replace” the interaction with the professors at Swarthmore. They are just an additional resource available to the students.</p>
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<p>That might be a little misleading.</p>
<p>It is true that Swarthmore hires undergrad majors as lab assistants, but **all **lab sections and discussion sections are led by faculty professors. For example, Bio 1/2 is a large lecture course with 120 students. It is divided up into six lab sections, and each of the six lab sections is conducted not by a grad student TA, not by an undergrad TA, but by a member of the Biology faculty. The lab assistants do just that, assist the faculty member in running the labs. This course also has a dozen or so trained student writing associates assigned (it is designated as a “writing” course). See Writing Across the Curriculum below.</p>
<p>The student led help and study groups are part of a major HHMI grant to start implementing informal peer-led problem set study groups in much the same way that Swarthmore students are hired as writing mentors in the nationally recognized Writing Across the Curriculum Program. The Writing Associates are nominated by faculty and then take a full-semester credit seminar in writing pedogogy before mentoring students. They are assigned to “Writing Courses” across the curriculum where all papers and lab reports are reviewed in a conference between the student and the peer mentor before a final revised draft is submitted. Peer mentoring is the accepted best practice in this case. Swarthmore’s program is very unique in having writing associates assigned to a science course to review and revise lab reports. Professor Gladstein, a tenured professor whose sole responsibility is running the Writing Associates program, has presented interesting research on the use of Writing peers in a science course:</p>
<p>[Gladstein</a>, Conducting Research in the Gray Space](<a href=“http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/fellows/gladstein.cfm]Gladstein”>http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/fellows/gladstein.cfm)</p>
<p>HHMI has been funding Swarthmore’s efforts to extend the Writing Associates model to science peer mentoring study groups. These students do not replace faculty. For example, professors have been known to show up for Sunday night student problem set study groups for courses like the first-year Physics seminar on the theory of special relativity.</p>
<p>The other place where student assistants are paid at Swarthmore is in grading weekly routine assigned problem sets, for example in the Calculus courses. I am not aware of any situation where an undergrad student at Swarthmore leads a discussion group or teaches a lab or does any grading of assignments such as exams or papers.</p>
<p>My older son is an undergrad TA at Bama. However at Bama, TA’s do not lecture - they only help the prof. TA’s just help out during labs and grade homework.</p>
<p>It’s been a great experience for my son. For the first semester, he was give credit for a 400 level class, and for the other semesters, he’s been paid.</p>
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<p>My S is a “drill instructor” in a foreign language. Sounds like the same thing. As part of the Rassias Method, beginning language students have daily 45-minute (IIRC) drill sessions in which they are forced to speak the language, in addition to their regular classes. To my knowledge, this does not involve any grading. The drill instructors work under the supervision of professors, are trained and selected, and so forth.</p>
<p>S enjoys it very much, and it provides an interesting and worthwhile work-study job. He also enjoyed it when he was a student in drill in another language last year.</p>
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I don’t know how common it is but-
I was an undergraduate TA - sort of. At my school they had something like four levels of Freshman physics - one for Physics majors, one for Engineering Majors, one for Life Science majors, and one for anybody else who wanted to take it. I was a Physics major, and they let Physics UGs with good grades TA the “anybody else” class. We didn’t lecture, just helped with problems and administered HW, exams and quizzes to our section. Actually, I was a pretty good TA, but not the greatest Physics student (my good grades eventually evaporated).</p>
<p>But the students I TA’d did very well on exams and the final.</p>
<p>Pro- I was only a little more advanced than these kids. What they were learning was fresh in my mind.<br>
Cons- Probably my maturity level was not that great. I remember getting a little distracted by the attractive young ladies in my section. But they still learned something.
Neutral - Some people are good teachers, some aren’t. I don’t think it matters whether you are UG, grad, or professor for htat matter.</p>
<p>I had a couple of intro econ classes where seniors would be on hand during the study sessions my prof made available to help us with our problem sets. And we could email them with problem set questions, and I’m pretty sure they also graded our problem sets since this was pretty basic econ and you either got the answer right or you got it wrong. They never taught classes though, as a graduate student TA might do.</p>
<p>I was a workshop leader for general chemistry students as a sophomore, TAed for a 1-credit Honors class as a junior, and TAed for two English classes as a senior (and, for wis75, I also took graduate classes, worked on independent research, and wrote a thesis). For the chemistry class, all of the workshop leaders met weekly to go over the assigned problems, and we used the same material in our workshops. I led 2-3 class discussions in both English classes, graded quizzes, commented on papers, and conducted review sessions before exams. One of the classes required fairly extensive group work, so I also helped groups plan their research and presentations.</p>
<p>At my university, students can count TA experiences toward their Honors requirements, so it’s certainly not unusual for undergrads to be TAs. However, I suspect that my professors gave me more responsibilities than the Honors staff had intended; I don’t think most TAs at my school lead classes.</p>