Lecturer's Blog 4: "Student assistants: a good solution to decrease work pressure?" by Marijke Leliveld

Now that we have finished the vast majority of work of the academic year 2020-2021, we can have a look at what comes ahead. Way before Covid hit us, we already faced high work pressure. Mostly due to structural underfinancing of higher education in the Netherlands (see for instance https://normaalacademischpeil.nl/english or https://www.scienceguide.nl/2021/03/ocw-onderzoek-hoger-onderwijs-komt-anderhalf-miljard-tekort/), but we need more than a blog to solve that problem. Since the pandemic started the work pressure only increased. We had to rewrite course manuals, rethink the planning and setup, the assignments, etc. We had to learn many new things on online teaching: how blackboard collaborate worked, how to record and edit lectures and put them online, exams needed to be programmed in Nestor with different versions for different people (with and without extra time), etc. etc.

One of the solutions that is offered now is to help out teachers by hiring student/teaching-assistants.* Having student-assistants (SA’s) in a course is not new. In my research methodology course (Bachelor program – between 300 and 500 students) I worked with up to 24 SA’s – currently mostly with about 10 SA’s. I do the coordination, course design, and give the lectures, but the SA’s supervise the tutorials and grade the assignments. That is a big responsibility, but it works. My course gets evaluated each year very highly, and the SA’s play an important role in this. Research methodology – which in my course is about creating good surveys, analyzing using SPSS and excel – is most often not the reason why our students choose to study Business Administration. So for these students it helps when they hear senior students enthusiastically tell them how important it is for the research they do for their Bsc thesis or MSc thesis. And because my SA’s are most often excited about their thesis topic, it makes doing research also more interesting for the 2 nd year students. In fact, it is not uncommon that my SA’s are asked for advice by their former students when writing their theses. The distance between my students and the SA’s is simply much smaller than between the students and faculty. For a course like research methodology that works out really well.

But what does it take to make this a success? The answer is simple: intense supervision and guidance of the SA’s. Before the start of the course, I have a meeting with all SA’s (old and new) to go through the entire course, and to let the old SA’s share their experiences in the previous year. I write a detailed handbook with an explanation of what they should do in each week, and in each tutorial, including deadlines they should maintain. I provide tutorial slides. I have a strict grading form for the assignments (rubrics like) and have separate meetings to discuss this form so that the feedback they give before the final version aligns with how we will grade. I have separate meetings on how to simulate the personalized SPSS datasets each team gets for the assignments. And I am available for questions they have during the course weeks, especially when team members get into a conflict or when there is a question they simply do not know the answer for.

Of course, not all courses are suited for SA’s to supervise tutorials. For my Ethics and International Business class (N = 500-750) the SA’s did not teach themselves, but were very important in the grading process. To paint the picture: this year 520 students wrote 3 essays each of 1000 words (and also some other team and individual assignments which needed to be graded – but let’s focus on the essays). Also in this case, they needed clear guidance in order to pull this off. Read: hours invested by regular staff – in this case the amazing Barend de Rooij and Juliette de Wit.

All in all, SA’s in your course can be a great asset and can get a lot of work done. But. It takes time. You can’t simply hire a bunch of them, and think life will be much easier. As such, staff should get hours for this supervision of these SA’s and to design rubrics and alike so that grading is doable by the SA’s, which affects the hour allocation within a course. But even when SA’s are not teaching or grading, and only help out putting rubrics in Nestor, or edit recordings, it is still our responsibility as faculty to create and design these rubrics and to make and record the lectures: to design a course. In my experience, that is the significant part of our work and it will not become smaller when SA’s can be used. On the contrary. It is not an easy fix as some people may think. Or hope. Yes, it is better than having no SA’s, but it is not a structural solution for reducing work pressure.

Don’t get me wrong: It is an absolute pleasure to work with smart and motivated SA’s, and to see them grow in their role. Some liked it so much they continued doing the Master education. And some even found love amongst their fellow SA’s. Of course, I invited myself already in case it ever comes to a wedding.

I pass this teaching blog on to Maarten Gijsenberg, who is such a talented teacher in the Marketing master.

* I use these terms interchangeably here as basically I refer to students helping out with our teaching activities, though I know some people have a strict separation of the terms.