Discussion sections should be abolished.
OK, perhaps that’s too extreme a statement, but I
wouldn’t mind some reform.
In the ideal case, discussion sections are meant to make huge
lower-division classes more personal. They should stimulate
discussion (hence the name), build upon ideas presented in class,
and even (when really successful) foster bonds between the students
and teaching assistants.
For graduate student Awad Awad, who is a TA for an Introduction
to Islam class, his role is like that of a translator of ideas.
When working with the students, he said, “I speak to them in
their own language. I make analogies, cultural references and
jokes.”
Since UCLA can be a university that seems too large and
impersonal, TAs like this are much like the gatekeepers to a
better-integrated system of undergraduates, graduates and
professors.
Communication studies Professor Tim Groeling believes that
students will benefit from a teaching assistant in
“faceless” introductory courses until they reach the
smaller and more personal upper division classes.
At the same time, he thinks that teaching assistants benefit
from the experience as well. “TA support is an excellent,
appropriate way for graduate students to support themselves …
build up expertise and relationships with professors in their field
of study and prepare them for teaching in that field,” he
said.
Awad agrees, noting that being a teaching assistant has
convinced him that he wants to pursue teaching in higher education,
and has also trained him for the experience.
In my capacity as an undergraduate, I agree with them ““
when a discussion section is effective, my understanding of the
subject becomes highly refined. Too often, though, I have heard of
and experienced sections that are a waste of time.
They are headed by TAs who do no more than regurgitate facts,
and who seem not to care about being there.
When these failed sections are made mandatory by either the
professor or the teaching assistant, against my better judgement, I
feel like that is only adding insult to injury.
Suddenly it’s like I’m back in elementary school
with a bad case of ADD.
The problem of the bad discussion section, I thought, first lies
in the ineffective abilities of the teaching assistant. When I
found out that the campus offered training workshops through the
Office of Instructional Development, but did not make them
mandatory, I thought I had found the problem and the easy
solution.
Make TA training workshops mandatory. The end. My column is
done.
However, Kumiko Haas, the associate director of Instructional
Improvement Programs at OID, explained why that would not work.
“The difficulty with any kind of TA training,” Haas
said, “is that each discipline is so different in what is
needed.” To offset that difficulty, OID provides “the
general tools to help the departments train their TAs.”
Thus, though the workshops are not mandatory, each department is
required to provide some kind of training service for the TAs. OID
functions as a service for these requirements, and Haas thinks
that’s better than mandatory workshops.
“There’s a benefit that we have some kind of overall
structure … but I don’t think that a really rigorous,
top-down policy would work ““ just because it’s so
different from what is needed.” Furthermore, she said that
TAs have a lot of their own work as graduate students, which can
make a mandatory program difficult to implement.
Haas mentioned an interesting program that might help bored TAs
and students. The Collegium of University Teaching Fellows provides
experienced teaching assistants with the opportunity to teach a
class on a subject that is directly related to their own specific
field of study.
The undergraduate students who can take it ““ usually
freshmen and sophomores ““ benefit from the TA’s
cutting-edge research and the small seminar-style class. One such
class offered this quarter is History 98T, titled Mystic Chords of
Memory: The U.S. Civil War in 20th Century Popular Culture.
Interesting.
Through programs like these, the TAs will have an opportunity to
both study and teach what they are most interested in. An
instructor experienced and excited about the subject makes for a
more interesting class.
But this program is very small ““ only around 14 applicants
are accepted into the program each year campus wide. This is
because of issues with funding, training and keeping the program
competitive, as well as other factors.
We need more programs like these. They should be supported, and
others like them should be created. Haas assured me that it’s
not an easy task, but I’ve never been afraid of a
challenge.
As for bored or well-meaning TAs in introductory classes, their
ineffectiveness should show in their evaluations. Once the
department notices bad reviews, it should require the TA to attend
a workshop, or help him or her to realize that some are not meant
for teaching.
That should eventually curb the number of ineffective
professors. After all, teaching is an art. But that is another
column altogether.
There. Now I am done.
Hashem looks forward to becoming a TA someday. E-mail her at
nhashem@media.ucla.edu.