I have been the Head TA for the graduate course, CS-570, at Drexel University for the spring term of 2020. Over the course of the term, our professor got COVID-19 and I was left in charge of the course. This is a daily log of what that experience was like, taking over the course unexpectedly and taking on new responsibilities. It is a very long post, but it fully lists everything that happened and how I handled it. At the end I have a little "What I Learned" blurb. The experience was stressful, but I learned so much and everything worked out.
Lecture is normally every Tuesday from 6pm-9pm. This was supposed to be the eighth lecture of the term. Due to the global pandemic, Drexel's ten week term has been shortened to a nine week term. That means this is supposed to be the second to last lecture of the term.
The professor starts the lecture stating she is sick. She has a sore throat. She asks us to be patient with her. She ends up having a really rough time speaking and ends lecture in 45 minutes.
At the time I didn't think anything of it. At this point, we had been in quarantine in Philly for about two months. We hadn't heard much about COVID-19 in a while. It did not cross my mind that she was infected.
We got a email today from the professor. We hadn't heard much from her at this point. The subject line was "Bad News" which was worrying. The email was very brief. The professor had caught COVID-19 and now has pneumonia. She asked me to take charge of lecture on Tuesday. I drew up a plan. I knew the topic fairly well and I have lecturing experience, so I wasn't too worried. The TA I work with asked if she could have a chance to lecture since she's never done it before. We only expected to cover the lecture.
I sent out an announcement to the class. I told them all the professor was still sick, and that myself and the other TA would be in charge of lecture. Students were comfortable with me lecturing as I've done it before in this course. I received lots of well wishes for the professor. I got one message from a student, "i hope she's going to be ok. its not the 'rona, is it?". I ended up not responding. The whole experience was very chilling.
Normally, we would have we a weekly Monday meeting with the professor to talk about the week ahead and grading. Instead, myself and the other TA used the time to plan out lecture.
This is the last lecture of the term. I didn't realize that until I had finished the lecture. Overall, everything went smoothly. We covered all the material as needed. Lots of students asked questions I couldn't answer about the final and the professor's health.
After lecture, I sent the professor an update email detailing how lecture went and asking a few questions relating to the remainder of the course. I told myself if I didn't have a response by the end of the next day I'd contact the department heads on moving forward. There's a lot of time sensitive grades that need to be dealt with. I don't have time to wait for a response that may never come.
I didn't hear back from the professor today. So I contacted the department heads. I got a near instantaneous response that they'd be meeting the next day to discuss moving forward.
Today is my first day of doing a daily log. I wrote the past few days to start. Today was a big day.
I woke up to a long email chain from the department heads, and our department technology services master. All they had were final exam questions the professor had prepped. Thankfully, she had prepped 265 different exam questions. The tech manager had these all loaded into our Drexel systems for me. We use BlackBoard Learn at Drexel to host our grades. There were a few questions for me to address in their emails. I planned a meeting with our undergraduate department head. While she isn't the graduate department head, she assigns me courses as a TA and I've worked with her before.
I met with our undergrad department head. We went over how to create a final from the list of questions. We went over the weights for the different parts of the course. We went over how to curve the course and calculate final grades for students. Basically, from here, I am taking control of the course and will be reaching out to the department heads when I need help or guidance.
After my meeting, I ate dinner and got to work. Here's my basic check list of what needs to be accomplished. A lot of these things won't be done anytime soon as they require other deadlines to occur.
Comprehensive To-Do List (as of 6/4)
First thing I did with my night was to announce and update my students of the current situation. The department heads and I agreed it was best to not tell students that the professor had COVID-19. They are currently deciding the best way for students to be told about the professor will not be attending to the rest of the course. Currently, they are deliberating between the department emailing students, or me telling them. My announcement today was about the project and lab grades and the structure of the final exam. I also did an absurd amount of thanking them for their patience and cooperation. I feel bad for them. I'm a mess and everything is chaotic, and my grade and education isn't on the line. Overall, everyone was receptive. Philly has been experiencing some storms recently that have caused power outages. I gave some students extensions to get work done. The most I can do is to be accommodating. I need them to accommodate me. I had to cancel my Friday office hours. This exam needs to be done ASAP so they have time to take it.
From there I started checking stuff off my list. I started with the grade center and getting it prepped. I put the columns in for the assignments for Week 9 that the professor never got around to adding. I got all my weighted columns set up and Preliminary Final Grades prepped. I can't tell if it's working until all the grades are in on 6/16. I've got something to jump off of.
From there I started reading through the 265 prepared final exam questions. I'm absurdly thankful the exam questions already exist. I don't think I'd be able to prepare an exam from scratch this close to the deadline with everything else I'm taking on. I read through all the questions and started to categorize them. I managed to break them down into different categories based on topic or structure. This took way too long and it was getting late. Once I finished that, I have a good idea of what the exam is on and what information to tell the students to study. I also emailed our tech manager about getting these questions into categories on BBLearn. Mine is currently set up on paper.
The plan for the final is to have pools of questions where X questions from each category are chosen at random for each student. This way we can allow students to take different exams at a similar level. For example, let's say we have a pool of 30 questions. There are 10 easy questions, 10 medium, 10 hard. Each student only gets 10 total questions; 5 from the easy pool, 3 medium, 2 hard. This allows each student to get similar exams, but not the same. This helps prevent plagiarism. The exam will be open for a week and students have 2 hours from opening it to complete it. This allows students with full time jobs, families, or in stressful situations to complete on their own time.
I got a lot done today. I also got my first email from the professor since Saturday. Very short email. She got released from the ICU today. Terrifying to know she's been in the ICU. I'm glad to know she's starting to recover. She definitely won't be here for the rest of the course, but I'm starting to think I have things under control. I've got awesome department heads, a great tech manager, and a completely unrelated mentor professor who's been keeping me sane. We're all in this together.
I was up til 5am working last night and writing, so I woke up around noon today. This is much later than I would have preferred to wake up, but it's not like I need to be anywhere physically.
I woke up to a few important emails. Two from the undergraduate department head. She sent myself and the other TA a preparatory email that she would be emailing the entire class on the status of the professor, and that we should keep what illness she has under wraps. The second email was sent 10 minutes later to the full class. From what I can tell, I think the students were prepared for the professor to be gone for the remainder of the course, this was just the final confirmation of their theories.
I also got an email from our tech manager regarding the exam. BBLearn is really unintuitive and nearly impossible to use. I have 265 questions to work with. My plan was to categorize these questions and then pull X amount of questions from each category to create a fairly well weighted exam. However, BBLearn was really not helpful in this. When I go to access the questions, there's no organization or clear way to tell them apart. This makes organizing 265 similarly worded questions very hard to do. Apparently I was using the wrong type of grouping and pulling questions from the wrong spots to organize. The tech manager sent me some links and videos to aid me. No matter how I did it, nothing worked. I sent him another email explaining the issue. No response yet, and the weekend is coming up. I need to get a plan for the final by the end of tomorrow so that it's ready to be released Monday morning.
If this category issue isn't resolved, I need a new tactic for the final. I think I'm not gonna be able to do my slick categories plan. I'm probably just going to have to give my students X questions total. This leads to a much less balanced exam, but I don't have the time to spend fighting BBLearn. I also need to sit down and calculate point values for the exam, point values for questions, and how many questions.
I also got a chance to write up a comprehensive study guide for the exam with all the topics and types of questions students can come across. I want to give them as much information as possible since the deadline is so soon.
I was really not thrilled about how little I got done for the final, so I spent some time getting grades in BBLearn. I went through zyBooks and transferred some reading and lab grades over. Normally, we'd have a script for this and it would take only 10 minutes. However, the professor isn't doing things the normal way. The labs are out of 500 points which then gets scaled down to 10. This normally would only take a simple equation, but not all 500 points are required to get the 10 points, and there are certain ways that are required to get certain points. It's really messy and requires me to do this all by hand. I would go through and figure out a way to write a script, but I really don't have that free time right now.
One of the things I'm starting to hear myself say too many times is "I would do X if I had more time..." and "I would do X if I had to do this every week". It's an interesting new perspective and I'm learning a lot about teaching.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
Another late night and another late morning. I woke up to an email from our tech manager. He told me that he is very good at using BBLearn, and if I told him what I wanted, he would do it for me. It only took him a few hours to do what would've taken me the entire weekend. This means I could do the category style final exam.
From there, I finished the final exam today, which both gave me a few gray hairs and took a massive weight off my shoulders. I managed to finish the exam with 36 hours to spare before students start taking it. I consider that an achievement. I'm actually ahead of schedule and finishing tasks a lot faster than I was anticipating.
Since I'm so far ahead of schedule, I added more office hours to make up for the fact I cancelled so many this week. I added some tomorrow before their project is due later that night. I also added some on Monday night. That is in addition to my normal Wednesday/Friday hours. I wish I could have given them more blocks of time to meet with me before their project was due, but the final had to come first. It's a much larger portion of their grade and requires a lot more work from me.
From here, I think the only action item for the next week is to finish the grading I have to do. I'll have their projects, the lab grades to transfer, and then any stragglers that never got graded.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
Yesterday was busy with chores around the apartment, so I didn't get a chance to write about what happened.
These two days have been my most TA-like days. Yesterday and today I held my rescheduled office hours. I didn't realize how much I missed that interaction with the students.
I started and finished grading the final part of their first project. We originally had one week in between each part of project 1, however, that didn't give us, the TAs, enough time to provide good feedback that the students could learn from. We gave them two weeks to finish the first project and the amount that they improved is really showing. I hope to see the same thing when I grade their second project that was due last night.
Their final zyBooks assignment was also due last night, so I transferred those grades over today. I'm very glad to be done with zyBooks for the term. It is not my favorite teaching tool.
Today the final exam I spent way too long stressing on was opened. I have not had any students start it yet. They have a week to take it, so I'm not surprised no one has started the exam on the first day it opens.
The course is really in the home stretch here. It's so much more manageable than I was expecting.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
Due to personal reasons, I haven't gotten nearly enough grading done. I've been trying to take a break and manage my stress. I'm actually fairly ahead of schedule, so I can afford this.
I've been holding office hours according to schedule. I've got more tonight. It's been nice to act as a TA for a bit, and not a professor.
So the professor I work for who is sick also has a second course. It's called CI-103, it's the third class in a project based sequence for freshmen. My friend is the TA for the class. Today we got a chance to talk about how their course is going with her absence. Apparently, the graduate TA for the course stepped in as the professor dealing with everything I'm doing. They don't have a final exam though. I just found it interesting how for a much lower level course, they have a graduate student taking over. In a higher level course, they have an undergrad student taking over.
I've finally started grading their second projects today and started grading the backlog. No one came to office hours today so I had that extra time.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
Currently, I am eating the best platter of chicken tenders and curly fries from the pizza place down the street, because today I celebrate! Today I completed all of my assignment grading! I spoke with the other TA, and she has also completed her assignment grading. We are currently waiting for a few extensions to come in, but all the massive amounts of grading is done! This is such an accomplishment for the course and the fact we got it done so soon too!. Grades aren't even due til Wednesday at noon. I am so proud of everyone this term.
Today I also sent an update email to the professor. I haven't heard from her in over a week, I'm a little worried about her health situation. The last time I heard from her, she was making a recovery. She was definitely not doing great earlier.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
All good things must come to an end. I was looking forward to an easy weekend before grades are due and I have to calculate final letter grades, however, it can never be that easy.
I was cleaning up the backlog a bit today. I had some extensions come in today. I found a student who had been absent for the first month of the course. They had emailed the professor that they flew back to China where they live, and due to the international travel, were immediately placed in a special quarantine hotel with bad WiFi. They were unable to access the course until recently when they were released. The professor, before going on sick leave, told us she would handle this student. I decided to take a look at their recently submitted assignments. I was on the second assignment for the class when I saw the following comment.
//String after removing vowels: hll, wlcm t jv-w3schls blg
To me, that looks like the string they were testing with was "hello, welcome to java-w3schools blog", which is a strange string to test with. Sure enough, I was able to find this exact code on w3schools, a common "learn to code" website. I managed to find the first three assignments completely online in different places. All their code was copied exactly. I only got through the first three assignments before I decided I needed a break.
Now normally, plagiarism cases are fairly easy. TA finds plagiarism. TA tells professor. Professor writes report. Well, I am currently lacking the professor aspect of the process. I compiled the assignments I have so far and the links to the websites where the student grabbed the code and zipped it up. I emailed it off to the department head and the undergraduate department head since they're the ones I've been reporting to instead of a professor.
In better news, I heard back from the professor today. She's still in the hospital recovering. Last I heard was over a week ago and she was just getting out of the ICU. The email was much more coherent than the last one. She said she's excited to go home to finish recovery. Hopefully she'll be home soon. I'm glad to know she's alright.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
I was planning a detox of caffeine this weekend given I finished my work early. Sadly, due to the plagiarism case, I still had plenty of work to do, and no caffeine to do it.
Today the main task was going through all their assignment and checking for plagiarism. I only went through the assignments they submitted on BBLearn and not zyBooks. There are an absurd amount of assignments on zyBooks and it would take an absurd amount of time to go through each one. Also, given the outcome of the BBLearn assignments, it might not even be necessary to look through the zyBooks assignments.
While I was Googling for assignments, I received an email from the undergraduate department head. I was CC'ed on the response to an email from the plagiarizing student. The student wrote a very long email concerned about passing the course, how they had a lot of 0s in for grades, how they don't have many assignment grades. There was a large section about how they "put in so much work" and that we are being "very unfair". This is actually an incredibly common argument from students that plagiarize. I very frequently get the email that they put a lot of work into an assignment and it's unfair to accuse them of academic dishonesty. We hadn't actually reached out to the student about their academic dishonesty yet, so I found it very funny that we got the email as I was investigating the case. The undergrad department head responded that she and the department head would be looking into their grades and assignments given the suspects of academic dishonesty. I did not respond and continued investigating.
For the most part, finding the assignments and where the student copied from was incredibly simple. Most students default to Google for assignments. If you search the right keywords, I find the same results the student does. Typically students also don't look past the first few results. I also have the advantage that I have what the student submitted. Half the time, you can copy and paste a unique line of code into Google and find exactly what you're looking for. If that doesn't work, it's also easy to copy and paste the assignment prompt to find what you're looking for. Thankfully, this student wasn't very smart with what they copied and it was fairly simple to find most of it.
Of the 14 assignments that are submitted on BBLearn, totalling 32% of their final grade, I was able to find 13 online. I found links with character for character, their exact submission. The only assignment that they completed themselves was a single lecture participation assignment; "List 5 Things You Expect To See On The Final". I zipped it all up and sent it over to the department heads for review. There's absolutely no way this can be considered anything except academic dishonesty.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
Final exams finished up last night. Everyone finished it up. I had three students not take the exam, but all of them haven't been completing assignments for a while. It's common for students to drop off and stop completing assignments. It's a little worrying, but there's not much I can do about it.
Now all the grades are in the computer, all that's left is for me to calculate curve. Since it's my first time doing a curve, I decided I'd just take the top score to 100, then add that many points to each grade. It ended up being a small three point curve. That's just about enough to take students up a partial letter grade. So an A- becomes an A. Then Bs become B+s. Fairly simple. I went through and tapped in all the grades. It really didn't take that long which was nice.
The one this I was wholly unprepared for was the amount of emails I'd get about grades. Students are ready to debate every single point on every assignment. It was probably one of the most stressful parts of this course. Just an absolute onslaught of students debating every point on every assignment. There's just a certain point where you have to put on a poker face and say you've done all you can. It's not my fault a student didn't listen to feedback on previous assignments. It's not my fault a student didn't prepare for the final exam. I did all I could to help them. It's too late now.
Today I got an email from the professor. She's home! She still has pneumonia, but she's home and is cleared for two hours of work a day. I'm so glad she's doing better and home safely. This experience has been horrifying, but she's back. I'm still gonna finish up the course so she can rest, but just to know she's back puts me at so much ease.
I had to make a quick trip to my biological father's today to celebrate my little brother's high school graduation. He's off to Penn State. I didn't get any emails while I was out, so I think that students have calmed down a bit, accepted their grades, and I'm ready to tell the undergraduate department head to push grades to the transcript center tomorrow.
The plagiarism case is gonna be a long one. I have no updates on it. It's in the department head's hands now.
We're almost there. One more email to go. Then I can put this course to rest. I can give myself a rest. Take a nap. Take care of myself more.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
This is it, my final entry. Today I emailed the undergraduate department head and told her I was done. The grades are ready to be pushed to the transcript center. I have one student giving me a hard time about his grade. He's failed the class but there's nothing more I can do. She's taking over the case. I also thanked her for her guidance and support in navigating the rest of the course. It's finally over though. We got through.
Completed Tasks
To-Do List
I personally believe the only reason we do things in life is to learn, grow, and better ourselves. So what would be the point in moving forward if I can't learn from this experience.
Skills Acquired
Life Lessons