Managing TAs at Scale: Investigating the Experiences of Teaching Assistants in Introductory Computer Science

Teaching assistants (TAs) are essential members of post-secondary instructional teams, who often have considerable student-facing time. The recently increasing demand for introductory computer-science (CS) courses has resulted in a corresponding increased demand for TAs. The existing TA literature has predominantly focused on investigating the role of training in the TA experience, particularly with respect to performance. This provides little insight into how TAs experience their management. Consequently, we investigate the role of management in the experiences of introductory-level CS TAs. We provide the structure for a formal, tiered management scheme employed in a high-enrolment introductory CS course. This scheme attempts to address the challenges associated with managing TAs at scale. As a case study, we compare the experience of TAs under this new management scheme with that of TAs under an informal, unstructured management style used in smaller introductory CS courses. Specifically, we used questionnaires to look at TAs' self-efficacy and understand their experiences. While we did not find a significant difference in TA self-efficacy between the two management styles, thematic analysis of the open-response data revealed a greater number of challenges reported by the TAs under the tiered management system. TAs characterized this tiered system as "organized" and frequently reported feeling overworked. Across both groups, TAs identified improved communication and additional training as factors that could improve their experience. Our findings suggest self-efficacy was not a sufficient measure to quantify TA experience. We propose framing TA experience based on their motivation and general well-being.