Goals for this practicum

Be responsible stewards of student data
Anticipate, analyze, and plan how to respond to issues around conflict-of-interest, interpersonal communication breakdowns, and other professional aspects of TAing.
Consider multiple perspectives and tradeoffs when addressing professionalism scenarios

At-a-glance

Check in and collate examples of student data we have access to (5 minutes)
Read each scenario and discuss approaches as a group in turn (25 minutes)
Debrief takeaway lessons and collate any unsettled questions (10 minutes)

What to do?

Make sure everyone from your practicum group who is there with you today is added to a single Gradescope group submission.

In the TA modules from the UCSD Teaching + Learning Commons (https://canvas.ucsd.edu/enroll/9RCM8R), you learned about our responsibilities for safeguarding student privacy and acting professionally. In this practicum session, you'll apply these guidelines in realistic scenarios. Sometimes, the right course of action is not clear-cut; use your group conversation time to weigh the pros and cons of multiple possible approaches.

First, discuss the type of student data that you each have access to as TAs. What measures are in place to protect that information (e.g. minimizing local copies? setting expiration dates for access permissions? controlling screen visibility when data is displayed, etc.?

Then, work as a group to analyze each of the scenarios given below and discuss the ethical or professional dilemma inherent in the situation. For each scenario, discuss the following:

Is there an ethical or professionalism dilemma presented in the situation? If so, what is it?
What could the TA have done differently in that scenario?
Are there any preventive measures that the TA could have taken to avoid that situation?

Scenario #1

The midterm for CSE XXX took place on Monday and one of the TAs for CSE XXX finds themselves facing an impossible schedule: they have a midterm for one of their classes on Wednesday, a paper deadline on Friday, a friend visiting over the weekend, and the graded midterms are due back on the upcoming Monday. The friend visiting over the weekend offers to help out by tallying up the scores and entering them into the student database once the TA is done grading a submission. Between the two of them, they successfully complete grading the midterms by Sunday night.

Scenario #2

CSE YYY has 8 weekly homeworks that are due each Friday and 3 biweekly programming assignments. A week before their finals, the students are notified that the grades for homeworks from weeks 4 and on are delayed and will be finalized at the end of the quarter, but that all PAs have been graded and are available.

Scenario #3

The CSE ZZZ TA prepares a pdf containing the information for the small group assignments and releases the pdf on the course forum so students can reach out to one another. Since there are some repeated names in the class roster, the list includes PIDs and emails to disambiguate.

Scenario #4

During a discussion session, some of the students express distaste for the logistics of the CSE XXX class and the way the class is run. The TA concedes that things had been run very differently when they had taken that class as a student. They also confess that they’d made suggestions to the rest of the TAs but had been shot down. The TA recommends that the students voice their opinions on the class forum and hopefully that will be enough to start a conversation about the course logistics.

Scenario #5

One of the TAs for CSE YYY hears about a great new software tool that could be useful for the students to use to collaborate on their assignments. The TA pitches the tool to the instructor, who loves it as well and the instructional team decides to make the software available to everyone in the class by uploading the class roster onto the software, creating accounts for everyone in the class. Unbeknownst to the team, the students then begin to receive emails about promotional events unrelated to the class and held by organizations outside the university.

BONUS: What scenarios have come up for you where it wasn't clear what the right course of action would be?

BONUS: Extra resources on Ethics of TAing by Luther Tychonievich at University of Virginia https://www.cs.virginia.edu/luther/2910/F2021/#ethics-of-taing