Teaching assistants learn to make the grade

Jason Knight's, ES '00, experiences with the teaching assistants (TAs) for his organic chemistry class contrasted as sharply as night and day. "[The first TA] would write all the answers to the problems on the board. If we asked the reasoning behind the answer, he'd give us the page numbers rather than explaining it."

The result: Knight, who plans on going to medical school, fared disappointingly in a key pre-med course. Even more troublesome was the fact that students in the class were rarely able to change their sections, according to Knight.

The following semester he had a different TA for organic chemistry, and a completely different experience. "She'd give us her home phone number. We could talk to her, and we'd sometimes spend over an hour in section," Knight said.

Knight noted that because of all the extra help his second semester TA gave him "there was definitely a difference in grades."

Unfortunately, Knight's experience with TAs is all too familiar to many undergraduates. Students often feel that TAs, whether in the humanities or the sciences, grade inconsistently and aren't always properly trained to teach undergraduates, or even communicate meaningfully with them.

The reasons underlying so many Yalies' rocky experiences with section leaders are complex. According to graduate students, when it comes to correcting papers and problem sets, which count for a sizable percentage of most students' final grades, their grading policy often depends on the instructions the course lecturer provides. "You can have lecturers who are very instructive about grading, and some lecturers just don't do that,"Joshua Perin, GRD '01, who teaches English sections, said.

Jeff Karem, GRD '01, also an English graduate teaching fellow at Yale, observed, "You're in this mediating position between the professor and the student. It's a very flexible, decentralized approach."

Graduate School Dean Susan Hockfield noted that the relationship between professors and graduate students has evolved to a "gentler" and more understanding one. "There was a kind of tougher way of learning the ropes [in the past]," Hockfield said. "What has developed is a kind of gentle attitude of how we teach not just students, but graduate students also."

Due to the lack of a strict, enforced grading policy, however, professors aren't held accountable for the apparent inconsistencies between sections for the same course. Faiza Issa, BR '00, felt that the quality and rigor of the sections for Jonathan Spence's course on the History of Modern China varied widely. "I wish the TAs would have had more of a standard policy," Issa lamented. "Half the TAs would accept rough drafts and half of them wouldn't."

Although some graduate students acknowledged undergraduates' concerns, many maintained that they make a conscious effort to grade consistently. "There is a fear among many graduate students that what they're doing might be perceived as inconsistent, but I don't think that it is," Perin said. Kristen Welsh, GRD '99, who has taught Russian language and literature sections, explained that TAs have their own grading worries. "At first, you worry that either you're going to be grading much easier or much harder than the other TAs," she said. "We can be an insecure bunch of people." There is no easy way for the TA to know whether their fears are based in reality.

A key reason for TAs' insecurities is the lack of a formal program to train graduate students to teach undergraduates.

In 1992, out of frustration with the situation, a group mostly made up of members of the Graduate Employment Student Organization (GESO) created the student-run organization Working at Teaching (WAT).

In addition to offering one-on-one advice to teaching fellows and teaching workshops, WAT has created a set of teaching guidelines, called "Becoming Teachers," which includes detailed descriptions of how to grade and critique written assignments, exams, problem sets, and lab reports.

The Graduate School has only recently begun to support the group, which is only 15 graduate students strong. Moreover, only about 150 grad students attend these workshops throughout the year, according to Welsh, WAT coordinator.

The Graduate School recognizes the problem. Following the national trend to strengthen teacher training, the Graduate School hired William Rando, former head of the teaching center of Florida International University at Florida, for the new post of director of teaching fellow preparation and development three months ago. "We're looking at issues of what does it mean to grade effectively, and we're looking at what is a grade," Rando said.

Specifically, Rando says he is creating a teaching portfolio program, to help graduate students learn "skills and values." He is also trying to establish a course development program in which participants would create their own courses. "I think we can do more," Rando conceded, "and that's why I was brought here,"

Many departments, however, offer their own teacher preparation courses. The English department has required its students to take a teaching seminar for the past 20 years. "We have a tradition of TAs who grade thoughtfully," John Rogers, GRD '89, said. Rogers is in charge of the seminar this year.

In the end, graduate students, undergraduates, and the Graduate School Administration agree that the teaching assistant system could use improvements. "The reality is that graduate students are determining, for a vast number of undergraduates, their grades, and they're not getting the training," Nikki Brown, GRD '01, said.

Back to News...