Minutes GAC Dec. 11, 2015
Attendance: Christara, Jepson, Fairgrieve, Liu
Regrets:  

Item 1. [Sponsor Dept. Chair] Allotment of TA hours to graduate courses.  

Notes: 

TA hours are currently allocated using the same process as undergrad courses:

Allocation Rule

1-14 students: no TA help
15-25 students: 1/2 TAship (27 hours)
26-39 students: 1 TAship
40-49 students: 1.5 TAship
50-53 students: 2 TAships
54+ (2 hours of TA help per student enrolled mostly rounded down to the nearest TAship)

This is roughly enrolment * X / 54 rounded down to the nearest half TA. 
Here:
- X = 2.2 for all 1st year undergrad courses except 104 and list below;
- X = 2.0 for everything else.

Enrolment is measured as of the Friday of the second week of lectures

Ugrad courses that get X = 2.2:  207, 258, 301, 302, 318, 369, 404, 454

Special requests for additional TA support then end up in with the Dept. Chair.

Issue: 

The pertinent issue for the GAC is whether the overall allocation formula we currently use needs to be revised somehow. Can we settle on a fixed formula that works well for all/most courses,rather than the current situation where chairs or designates have to make the call which inherently ends up raising issues of fairness. Of course, chairs will always have discretion to handle one-off situations that arise, but the issue here is dealing with not the one offs but rather the general case.

The GAC needs to explore if a different/deeper allocation rule makes sense, perhaps one that take into account style of course (e.g., lecture vs seminar) etc. 

ACTION ITEM: Get a recent history of requests by graduate course instructors for extra TA hours.

Discussion points that were raised, but not necessarily universally agreed on:

The level of TA support for ugrad and grad courses is generally low, with only two hours allocated per student per term.  

Examples were CSC 2306, High Performance Scientific Computing and CSC 2503, Foundations of Computer Vision.  Individual assignments in these courses were estimated to take 30-45 minutes to mark.  With three or four assignments per term, plus a final exam, two TA hours per student per term does not cover the marking required.

Extra TA hours may sometimes be appropriate for the extra time involved in developing new courses (either new courses for the deparment, or new for that faculty member).

Thresholding the number of assigned TAs to be in steps of 1/2 TA is probably unfair to relatively small courses (8-14 students get no TA help currently).  Rounding to multiples of 10 to 15 hours may help resolve this.  

It was noted it may be problematical to find qualified TAs. 

Whatever the policy, grad courses should be designed with this allocation policy in mind.

Requests for TA support should include a detailed enough description of the requirements to complete the current TA description of duties form.  How many assignments, how many exams or projects, and how long will it take to mark each one?  Which parts will be marked by the istructor, and how much time will that require?