Hi all,
I am taking a large math class that has 6 TAs, and the class has a weekly HW which worth 20% of the total grade.
There are 12 discussion sections for that class, and each TA teaches 2 discussions. hwis graded by the TA you are taking the discussion with every time.
I am typically getting 10-11 out of 15 on hw, but since my TA said the average is typically 10 to 11, I was not so worrying about my hwgrade. However, I have recently found out that every friend of mine who is taking the same math class but with different TAs are getting almost full score on every hw. One of them even told me he sees most people are getting 14 or 15 on hwwhen he picks up his hw. I didn’t get any clear information about other section’s hw average, but I assume it is higher than my section’s average
I am now really frustrated because I noticed my hw grade is really low and can easily mess up my final grade. I am also really mad because 1. my TA told me the average was 10-11, so I didn’t change my hw style, but it seems to be not in overall class! and 2. that is really unfair! having a different TA should not make any unfairness in class!!
I am really really upset and sad because of that, and don’t know what I can do… I am going to go to different TAs’ office hours and maybe ask to regrade my past HWs… (By the way, asking instructor will not be an option because I am pretty sure that my instructor wouldn’t care these types of problem.) But I can’t stop worrying they just don’t listen and don’t care about my argument…
Does this type of problem also happen everywhere? What is the best solution for that? What can I do more than arguing to different TA? Thank you,
Do you have evidence that the other TA’s grade easier for the same homework sets ? Do other students notice the same thing? If so, you (and others ) should make an appointment with the professor in charge and show him/her the evidence that you have. (The prof is the first stop- no matter what you may think. ) If there are many students with the same issue, you stand a better chance of him/her listening to you.
If the professor is not responsive, then you can, if you wish, make an appointment with the undergrad department chair (in big departments, there are separate chairs for just undergrads), or the chairperson, if there’s no undergrad chair.
With all your meetings, be courteous and frame your question as a concern rather than a rant or a complaint. Even so, there’s no guarantee of anything.
I’ve had a couple of classes like that - a large lecture where the different TA’s graded homework for the students in their lab/discussion section. Although each TA has to abide by the same standards when grading homework, there is obviously going to be some fluctuation anyways. As such, the grades are normalized at the end of each semester to account for these differences. Essentially, if you are x standard deviations above/below the average compared to other students with your TA, your score will be adjusted up/down so that it is x standard deviations above/below the class average.
For example, if your class average is 10/15, your own average is 11/15 and the standard deviation is 1 (so you are one standard deviation above average). The lecture overall has an average of 12.5 with a standard deviation of 0.5. You are one standard deviation above your TA’s mean, so your grade will be adjusted to 13/15 (0.5 above the 12.5 average).
So, it may be the case that the professor plans to normalize the homework grades at the end of the semester anyways. I have never had a class where they didn’t. So I would go politely ask the professor if he plans to normalize the homework grades somehow. Don’t whine about unfairness to the professor as that is never an effective way to get someone on your side, but no harm in asking if the grades will be normalized.
I’ve had classes where TAs graded homewwork for their section but then they normalize the grade distributions So that it doesn’t matter what TA you had. Ask your professor if they plan to do this or if they plan to rectify grading differences between TAs in someother way. If you bring up a clear problem with the TAs grading system and a reasonable way to rectify it, then mpst professors will be reasonable. It’s possible the professor didn’t consider this or was waiting until the end to see if there was a clear difference in the average grade among TAs.
As someone who has been a TA in large lectures with several sections, I just want to note that not all lecture classes function that way. In fact, in my experience most professors assume that the TAs are grading fairly and similarly and your grade is your grade. I did have one professor have a grading meeting with us to discuss and make sure that our styles were similar - there were 6 TAs, and they were pretty similar - but I’ve TA’ed in other classes where the professor just assumed that we were, or didn’t care.
Your TA’s section average could be lower for a variety of reasons - maybe that TA isn’t teaching as well or maybe your section just does more poorly on homework, overall. One of my TA sections had a lower average than the other one, and it wasn’t because I graded Section 1 different than Section 2. Your question is not whether your friends are getting higher grades than you, but whether they are getting higher grades than you for doing the quality of same work.
In the classes I’ve taken with labs set up this way, the prof looks at the grades from every TA’s section and if there’s a noticeable discrepancy between the averages for each section the grades will be normalized.
Check your syllabus, and if there’s nothing there addressing this issue, get in contact with the professor. My chem prof last semester told us at the beginning of the class that if we felt there was a problem with grading we needed to bring it up to him so the department’s TA coordinator could look into it.
To add to this, I’ve TAed for professors that assume that all TAs are grading the same, but they were all willing to readjust grades at the end if someone brought it up to them that there was a clear difference in grades among different TA’s. Sometimes, no one brings the issue up, but when people do, the professors are always willing to take a look and adjust if they feel they need to. It’s not always something that professors do without prompting though–that depends more on the professor themselves.
Your professor may still not want to make any adjustments even if you discuss the potential issue for this. This may be because the professors are really grading similarly but that the quality of the work their students are doing is what’s causing the discrepancy. Or a million other reasons there might be differences between the averages in different TA sections. But you never know unless you ask.
^Oh definitely - I’ve known of situations in which students have gotten grades adjusted by the professor because they believed their TA graded them unfairly or inaccurately.