Volunteer Culture
Say there is an exam review session the following week and you need volunteers to help run the session. It is tempting to simply ask for volunteers during the staff meeting. While this is fine on one or two occasions, do not ask for volunteers on a regular basis. By asking for volunteers, you are inadvertently encouraging TAs to spend more hours on the course than their allotted hours! Do not overwork the TAs.
The problem is made especially difficult because the TAs will be hard-working, considerate individuals who care deeply about the students. As another example, if you ask for volunteers to hold one-on-one meetings with struggling students, you will induce guilt in the TAs who do not volunteer, and so you will end up with TAs who volunteer, yet really cannot spare the time.
TA applications are competitive, and some students desire 20-hour positions. So, if there are many opportunities to volunteer, some TAs will feel pressured to volunteer as much as possible to increase their chances for these applications. Overall, this will lead to an unhealthy, overworked environment. Avoid this!
One approach is to anticipate all such events at the beginning of the semester and have the TAs fill out their participation in advance, taking care to ensure that the number of hours they fill out matches their appointment.
Another approach is to maintain a secret mental or digital list of TAs who haven’t been pulling their own weight recently. Distributing tasks to these TAs is a good way to artificially rebalance the workload.
Keep in mind that offering more resources to students does not necessarily lead to more learning. Students will certainly appreciate the effort, but the best learning is done when they sit down and concentrate hard. More office hours or one-on-one meetings might sound like a good idea in principle, but is this really the best option for students? I will relate the anecdote of my friend who once spent an entire RRR week attending CS 61A review sessions. He unfortunately did not score very well on the final because did not devote enough time to individual practice.
The takeaway is to think about distributing resources more effectively, rather than distributing more resources.