TA Responsibilities in the Data Science Clinic

Overview

This document outlines the standard responsibilities of a Teaching Assistant (TA) in the Data Science Clinic. Please note that specific duties may vary as different mentors might request additional tasks. The responsibilities listed here form the baseline expectations.

Important: All TAs should review the TA Training Repository and complete the TA Training Presentation before beginning their duties. These resources provide essential guidance on technical standards, pedagogical approaches, and professional practices.

Core Responsibilities

TAs are expected to:

• Review student pull requests using the /clinic-pr-review Claude skill. The skill runs the code and checks it against clinic standards. Review the skill’s output, verify its findings, and leave the review on the pull request yourself. The skill is meant to assist you in reviewing the code, not to replace you.
• Ensure students are pushing to GitHub, opening pull requests, and opening issues. A student with nothing on GitHub by the deadline receives a 0 for the week, so catch this during the week, not after.
• Ensure students are not getting stuck on setup issues and technical bugs. Technical onboarding problems from week one must not carry into week two.
• Escalate technical issues you cannot solve to clinic staff, and other student concerns to the project mentor or clinic staff. See escalation.
• Post a weekly update on each of your projects to the thread in the clinic TAs Slack channel.
• Attend the TA sessions and the weekly mentor session for each project.
• Meet with external mentors as needed.
• Act as the technical advisor on repository structure.
• Keep PRs moving and deleting old branches. Reconciling 25 unmerged branches in week 9 is no fun.
• Evaluate, during finals week, up to two repositories using the checklist found here.

Conducting TA Sessions

• Frequency: Conduct two in-person TA sessions each week.
• Location and Time: Sessions should be held at the designated location and time for the project.
• Nature of Sessions: Sessions are intended to be interactive working periods. TAs should offer assistance related to the project, including technical support, advice, and troubleshooting.

TA sessions are where debugging happens. Mentors are instructed not to debug code during the mentor meeting, so expect that work to be your responsibility.

A short checklist for running a session is here.

Role in Student Support

• TAs serve as the initial point of contact for students’ technical, logistical, and administrative queries.
• Ensure active engagement and support during office hours.

Attendance and Grading

• Weekly Reporting: TAs must report student attendance weekly through Canvas.
• Scoring System: Attendance is scored out of 5. Late arrivals (up to 10 minutes) receive a 3/5 score. Those more than 10 minutes late are marked with a zero.

Final week grading

• Technical Assessment: At the end of the quarter, each TA will evaluate two repositories using a checklist. This checklist can be found here.

Handling Student Inquiries

• If students question their grades, especially those related to attendance, refer them to clinic staff. Include any relevant information in your communication.

FAQ

1. What if a student is ill or has COVID and requests a TA session via Zoom?

   • Allow them to attend via Zoom, but ensure they email clinic staff to record this exception.

2. What should I do if a student asks me to complete their work?

   • Report this immediately via email or Slack to your project mentor and to clinic staff.

3. I have a student who is behaving unprofessionally during the TA session.

   • Report this back to your mentor and the clinic director ASAP.

4. A student can’t get their environment working and I can’t fix it either.

   • Escalate to the clinic RSE / technical staff in the mentor-TA Slack channel. Problems like this should be quickly reported. If a student can’t get their computer setup for a week, that’s already ~12% of work time wasted.

5. What goes in my weekly Slack update?

   • One short post per project in the thread in the clinic TAs channel: who pushed and who didn’t, what’s open and awaiting review, what’s blocked, and anything you’re escalating.

Final Note

While students are students and a core part of the clinic experience is learning, it is not the purpose of the TA to correct unprofessional/undisciplined/improper behavior. If you feel that any of these is occurring please report it to your mentor and the clinic director ASAP.