Written by Michael E. Cotterell (mepcott@uga.edu), Program Director, CSUA
The Computer Science Undergraduate Assistant (CSUA) program aims to leverage the success of undergraduates who have completed the course in which they serve and wish to share their knowledge and abilities with their peers. Participants provide valuable knowledge, insight, and learning strategies for both the students and the instructional team they work with, while also furthering their own mastery of related material.
This course/program fulfills the Experiential Learning Requirements for University of Georgia students with majors in Franklin College. To see if it satisfies the requirement for non-Franklin students, check http://engage.uga.edu and search under the Experiential Learning tab.
The CSUA program has two tracks for participants, Peer Learning Assistant (PLA) and Undergraduate Teaching Assistant (UTA). Regardless of track, participants are hired as undergraduate student workers. Therefore, any rules, regulations, and policies for student workers imposed by the Computer Science Department, University of Georgia, and the University System of Georgia apply in addition to the policies described in this document.
All participants must have taken the course they're assigned to at the University of Georgia and received a satisfactory grade. As such, they will gain an invaluable alternative and applied perspective into the course to which they’re assigned. Compared to GTAs, undergraduate assistants tend to have a closer peer relationship with other undergraduate students. As such, measures will be taken to directly address potential conflicts of interest, including, but not limited to, requiring the same conflict of interest training that is required for all UGA employees and anonymizing assignments so that they do not contain easily identifiable personal information. These practices have been approved for the CS department's use of UTAs in the past.
PLA participants attend lectures and labs in participating active learning Computer Science courses to assist instructors in conducting active learning exercises and answering student questions. Additionally, participants will hold office hours, weekly review sessions, and aid in the creation of course content. Review sessions will be entirely PLA-lead and cover material that the PLAs believe students are struggling with or would benefit from additional reinforcement.
The requirements for this track are listed below. Instructors are encouraged to contact the CSUA Program Director if they have any questions regarding any of these requirements.
-
Under most circumstances, PLAs may not grade. Exceptions may be made by the course instructor only when the grading is sufficiently low stakes (e.g., an attendance grade or an assignment worth strictly less than 1% of an overall course grade). If such an exception is made, then it may not constitute more than 10% of a PLA's assigned time across the entire semester.
-
Regular, documented evaluation and feedback is required. All participants are expected to participate in weekly meetings with their course instructor / mentor. Direct feedback should be provided on an immediate and ongoing basis. Specifically, instructors should directly observe in-class PLA activities and regularly provide feedback on what is and what is not working well. Participants are required to summarize their work experience each week to the course instructor. Additionally, all participants will need to complete and document an exit interview with their instructor.
UTA participants work directly with the instructional team, including Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), to help with traditional teaching assistant activities, including assignment assessment and office hours, as needed. In particular, UTAs will regularly be challenged to reinforce their knowledge about course material and ancillary concepts by grading assignments and helping create and test automated evaluation tools for assignments.
The requirements for this track are listed below. Instructors are encouraged to contact the CSUA Program Director if they have any questions regarding any of these requirements.
-
UTAs may grade anonymized assignments under the direct supervision of the course instructor or an instructor-appointed graduate teaching assistant. Exceptions may be made by the course instructor only when the grading is at least 90% mechanical in nature (e.g., when an autograder script is utilized).
-
Regular, documented evaluation and feedback is required. All participants are expected to participate in weekly meetings with their course instructor / mentor. Direct feedback should be provided on an immediate and ongoing basis. Specifically, instructors or instructor-appointed GTAs should directly observe assessment-related UTA activities. Participants are required to summarize their work experience each week to the course instructor. Additionally, all participants will need to complete and document an exit interview with their instructor.
While instructors and undergraduate assistants likely talk to each other on a regular basis, it's important to keep a record of what happens each week. To accomodate this, partipants will be enrolled in an eLC course where they can submit a weekly summary of their experience. The specific requirements for this summary will be posted on the eLC course. Participants and instructors should not see this an extra activity. Instead, each summary should be seen as opportunity to reflect on what has and has not worked over the past week.
Instructions for Supervisors: For each undergraduate assistant that you supervise, you will need to meet with that student and conduct an exit interview before the student's last day of work using a survey tool. If you supervise a student that works more closely with another instructor, then you may delegate the exit interview to that instructor; however, you are still responsible for making sure the exit interview is conducted. The survey tool and deadlines will be emailed to supervisors near the end of each semester.
