摘要
We present a comprehensive analysis of teaching assistant (TA) application preferences, with the goal of identifying whether there are significant differences in the courses students prefer to TA for based on student identity. Our data was gathered over the span of four years and represents 15,000+ individual applications for all courses in Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Focusing on the dimensions of applicant program level (undergraduate versus Master's students), gender, and international versus domestic student designation, we perform an analysis of application patterns. Our results show that program level, gender, and international status all play roles in student application behavior. Further, we identify specific courses that are preferred by various subsets of students, such as a strong affinity of students who have gone through a Master's bridge program to apply to those courses and a tendency for women and non-binary students to apply at greater rates to our first-year seminar, data science, and databases courses. Finally, we investigate the relationship between instructor gender and applicant gender--revealing that when women and non-binary applicants prefer certain courses, these courses tend to also have a greater-than-average representation of women and non-binary instructors. As a result of this analysis, we present three recommended next steps to gain deeper understanding of the observed patterns. This work demonstrates that with a centralized TA application system, an institution can gain a comprehensive understanding of application behaviors--leading to informed decisions about where to potentially intervene, especially with an eye toward broadening participation in computing at all levels.
摘要译文
我们对助教（TA）应用偏好进行了全面分析，目的是根据学生身份确定学生选择助教的课程是否存在显著差异。 我们的数据是在四年的时间内收集的，代表了Khoury College of Computer Sciences所有课程的15,000多份个人申请。 重点关注申请者课程水平（本科生与硕士生）、性别以及国际学生与国内学生，我们进行了申请模式分析。 研究结果显示，课程水平、性别、国际地位等因素对学生申请行为有影响。 此外，我们还确定了不同学生群体偏好的特定课程，例如，通过硕士桥梁课程申请这些课程的学生具有很强的亲和力，以及女生和非二进制学生以更高比率申请我们一年级研讨会、数据科学和数据库课程的趋势。 最后，我们调查了教师性别和申请者性别之间的关系——揭示了当女性和非二进制申请者喜欢某些课程时，这些课程也倾向于具有超过平均水平的女性和非二进制教师的代表性。 作为此分析的结果，我们提出了三个建议的下一步，以更深入地了解观察到的模式。 这项工作表明，使用集中的TA应用系统，机构可以获得对应用行为的全面理解，从而做出关于潜在干预的明智决策，特别是着眼于扩大所有级别的计算参与。
Felix Muzny[1];Abdulaziz Suria[2];Carla E. Brodley[3]. Student Application Trends for Teaching Assistant Positions[C]//SIGCSETS 2025: Proceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1, Pittsburgh PA USA, 26 February 2025- 1 March 2025, US: ACM, 2025: 798 - 804