Graders and Lab Assistants
From GradBook
This article is part of the series EECS TA Guide |
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Most undergraduate and some graduate subjects have graders and lab assistants in addition to TAs.
Contents |
Hiring
Some professors delegate the responsibility of hiring graders and lab assistants (LAs) to the TAs or the head TA. If this is your job, first talk to Prof. George Verghese and Lisa Bella to find out the total number of hours per week your subject is allocated for graders and LAs. It is generally expected that each grader spends about five to eight hours per week (what about LAs???), so hire accordingly.
Be sure to hire all the graders and LAs at least a week before the first day of class. Get in touch with previous terms' TAs to find out who were the best graders and top students and contact those students. If you still have open slots, you can ask Anne Hunter to send out an email advertisement for the position. Ask each grader and LA to get in touch with Patsy Sampson to set up time cards to get paid.
Hourly pay rates effective 9/1/2005 are:
- Freshman or sophomore: $9.00 per hour
- Junior or senior: $9.75 per hour
- Graduate student: $10.75 per hour
Check with Lisa Bella for updated pay information.
Eligibility
If the student holds an F1 Visa with a full-time assistantship, they are not eligible to work any other job. Thus, they can not get paid as a grader.
No full-time TAs are allowed to grade or lab assist for pay for the same subject.
[Ask Verghese and Bella about these: Perhaps we should discourage a student from being a TA and a grader or lab assistant (for different subjects) at the same time. Knowing how much time TAing takes, the person may not take his/her grading job as seriously as the TA job. There is also a conflict of interest if there is overlap in the enrollment of the two subjects. I also recall that graduate students on RAships who want to be graders require the permission of their research supervisors.]
Organizing and managing graders and lab assistants
The head TA (if there is one) should send a document or e-mail to all the TAs, graders and LAs early in the semester establishing all the protocol for graders and LAs. The rest of this section are some suggested policies you may wish to adopt.
Scheduling logistics
Before the first problem set is graded, the TA needs to tell the grader:
- The schedule (days and times) of when problem sets are due from the students.
- The schedule (days and times) of when graded problem sets need to be returned to the TA.
- The schedule (days and times) if there are some problem sets that need to be graded and returned early so the students can review them before exams.
- Sometimes a student will have an acceptable reason for turning in a problem set late. In these cases, the TA may want to tell the student there is no guarantee the student will get their problem set back when the other students get theirs back. It may take e.g. an extra week based on the grader's constraints.
Grading standards
Develop a grading policy before you meet with the graders and be very clear to all staff, graders and students what this policy is. Especially for the first few problem sets, make sure grading between the graders is consistent and accurate. Some issues to think about are:
- How many points per problem? How fine is the granularity for grading?
- How many points per problem set?
- Should all problems be graded?
- Are any problems of the problems optional for the students?
- Should grading be based on effort, correct answers, or what combination?
You may want to ask graders to send email reports to their section instructor and/or section TA(s). The staff can then use these reports as feedback to find out which concepts need to be taught better and how students are doing in general.
Texts for graders
Make sure all graders have the relevant texts! In the past, some graders simply graded by looking at the TA-provided solutions without even knowing what the problems are; this is not good. If the graders do not have the texts for the subject, you should ask the professor whether the staff can provide them with texts.
Exchanging problem sets
Subjects that assign weekly problem sets should usually return graded homework papers within a week after students have turned them in. TAs should take extra care to be sure that the relevant homework is returned prior to an exam.
It's easiest for all involved if the TA and grader don't have to meet every week. They can just leave problem sets and time cards in a secure location, such as with the course secretary.
It's easiest for the grader if they just have to make one or two trips per week, (i) to drop off graded work and (ii) to pick up new work from the students and get their signed time card from the previous week.
You'll also need a reliable way to get solutions to the graders. There are several ways to do this, e.g. (i) the solutions may be available on the course web page by the time the grader needs them, (ii) the solutions can be left with the work turned in by the students.
Rotation vs. fixed sections
You can either have the graders be assigned to fixed sections the whole term or rotate them. The advantage to a fixed system is that the graders get to "know" particular students and gauge their progress. The advantage to a rotation system is that it somewhat normalizes the variation in grades due to the graders.
More notes on grading
There are several things to do to make it easy to return graded problem sets to students. The TA and grader should be clear on who does what.
- The problem sets should be alphabetized.
- For privacy, don't write the scores on the front of the first page. For example, graders could write the scores in the top right corner of the second piece of paper. That makes it easy for whoever is recording the grades, because students write their name on the first page, often in the top right corner.
- Include the denominator "/?" since students may look back at their work long after the class and forget that the scaling was e.g. out of 3, or 50.
