Our son is a HS junior and looking at many different schools Computer Science. Many top and decent CS schools are large publics (UIUC, Purdue, VTech, ASU, U of Arizona, etc.), and I’m concerned about classes being taught by TA’s rather than Professors. Are there some well-known big CS schools where that is a bigger problem than others? How much should we be worrying about this? Is there any data published about this sort of statistic?
I, and my other kids, went to smaller colleges where this was not an issue, so seeking input.
Most of the big universities’ frosh/soph level courses (and sometimes upper level courses with large enrollments) use the model of a faculty member giving the primary lecture, with smaller discussion or recitation sections led by PhD student TAs.
Despite the disdain of TAs that is common on these forums, this is not necessarily bad. After all, if you have two instructors (the faculty member and the TA), you have two chances to understand the material from different perspectives and presentations. Plus, a large class may have many TAs, so you have a selection of TAs as well as the faculty member to go to during their office hours for individual assistance.
PhD student TAs being the lead instructors are probably most common in English composition, beginning foreign language, and (at some schools) lower level math courses where the material is not too advanced but small class size is desired.
You can look up online class schedules at various schools to see class sizes and check instructor names against rosters of faculty and PhD students.
My D is in CoE at Purdue. All her STEM classes are taught by professors. PhD students lead the small group recitations for the larger lectures. She had an English course taught by a grad student and that’s it.
Her TAs have all been amazing and in some cases the TA office hours were more helpful than the profs because they were closer to the material in terms of testing and could more clearly explain problems.
I remember seeing a study that showed that courses with TAs had positive correlations to students remaining in their major.
This is common, yes, with professor doing lecture (and office hours) and TA’s doing “sections.” TA’s also do the grading. For a large class of, say, 300, there may be 6 TA’s teaching and grading 50 students, or sometimes the ratio is worse with, say, 75 per TA.
I often write on the Ivy League school forums that applicants need to realize that classes at those schools are also often structured this way. In fact, in come cases, there may even be undergrad TA’s ( I know of this occurring in CS at one Ivy school.
On the other hand, all the classes I took as an older adult at UMass Boston were unexpectedly small and taught entirely by the professor (English classes). So I would ask or research what is happening at each school for certain majors.
Sometimes as you move through the college years, declare a major, and take more advanced departmental offerings, the classes get smaller and the personal connection to faculty and mentors develops more.
My son, a college junior, has been TAing for a couple of different CS courses for the past two years. He’s apparently been getting very good reviews from the students who are in his recitation sections, perhaps partly because he’s just recently taken those courses and done very well. Most TAs in those courses are graduate students (selection of undergrads is purely based on merits).
Undergrad TAs in CS are not uncommon. My college, in addition to CS, had undergraduate TAs in calc and stats. In all cases though, it was the professor who lectured with the TA running the recitations
One of the issues we’ve run into with undergrad TAs in CS is that they sometimes only accept the specific answer that the prof has given rather than considering a student’s alternative approach. They just don’t have the experience to realize when the alternative approach is correct and/or may even be more efficient/effective than the prof’s designated answer.
I’m not sure what school you’re referring to, but problems in CS (and math) always have multiple ways to solve them. That’s always part of the consideration in the design of the course.
I would not blame an undergrad for this. The prof (or head TA) generally sets the grading rubric. But I am unaware of any college that does not have a regrade process
I’m not blaming the undergrad, I understand that it isn’t their fault. The school has a re-grading process but it is not a trivial process, particularly when there are hundreds of kids in the main class and problem sets/assignments are weekly. In addition, students that take the class in their first semester, may be unwilling or unsure as to when it is appropriate to challenge a grade.
As in any subject, quality of teaching, fairness in grading, etc. will vary and there are both excellent and mediocre TAs and professors at every school.
TA’s grading will vary a little no matter how hard the professor tries to give a comprehensive rubric. Many students complain at a large university. The professor can see the average grade for each section, so wide variation in TA grading can be affirmed. Adjustments can be made by the professor if necessary for fairness (up not down- down would cause an uproar!), at least in the university I am familiar with.
Seems like grading of programming assignments in lower level CS courses could be done by using what in industry would be QA test suites on the programs to check for correctness, then using human reading to check for code readability. This would not require a specific solution out of multiple possible solutions.
Indeed, each student’s solution is expected to vary. Automated potential copying/cheating detection may be used to check if different students’ solutions are suspiciously similar to each other.
My D is a grader this year for one of her chem e courses (granted not an intro course). There are three people grading - the prof, the TA, and my D. The way they split it up is everyone is assigned certain problems on the assignments so all three of them have eyes on every single student and there is consistency. Not sure if that is a unique set up or not. (Only the prof and the TA grade exams and they do the same split up).