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After attempts to increase staffing in UC Berkeley computing courses failed last semester, course staffers continue to report overwork and a diminished educational experience for their students.

In an effort to shoulder heightened instructional labor costs, associate teaching professor John DeNeros experiment with new staffing models in CS 61A which reduced reliance on undergraduate workers labor has been met with both criticism and applause.

Unlike other departments, computing courses are primarily staffed by these undergraduates, who often claim overwork and insufficient resources to meet campuss high teaching demand.

So in February, campus and UAW 2865, the local union that represents these course staffers, met at the bargaining table to negotiate a new compensation and hiring model for undergraduates staffing computing courses. Slated to last only two weeks, negotiations ended up lasting 14 weeks charges of unfair labor practice, pushes for mediation and pressure from elected officials to reach a deal.

Six months since their agreement was ratified May 22, course staff and facultys shared goal of ensuring access to computing courses has been muddied by allegations of contract violations and competing visions of how to best serve students on a tight teaching budget.

The agreement entitles uGSIs in EECS and DSUS, or computing uGSIs, to about $2,700 per month for 20-hour work weeks starting October 2023.

Computing uGSIs working eight, 10 and 12 hours per week receive 40%, 50% and 60% in-state tuition remission; those working more than 12 hours per week receive full remission.

In comparison, uGSIs outside EECS and DSUS earn at least $3,100 per month for 20-hour work weeks and receive full remission of in-state tuition.

Before the local agreement, uGSIs across campus departments all made about $2,500 per month for 20-hour work weeks. At EECS and DSUS, eight-hour uGSIs received 40% tuition remission, and non-computing uGSIs got full remission.

During negotiations, however, the campus bargaining team which included associate teaching professor John DeNero, teaching professor Ani Adhikari and associate teaching professor Josh Hug warned in order to maintain historic large course capacities, compensation may need to be reduced.

In a March video about staffing negotiations, DeNero said EECS and DSUS spent about $14 million on instruction in the 2022-23 academic year resulting in a $2.4 million deficit.

To help campus close the funding gap in computing instruction, head teaching assistant and former Daily Cal staffer Gabe Classon said computing uGSIs have agreed to reduce their tuition remissions since 2020 and reduce their wages in comparison to other campus uGSIs since the ratification of 2023 agreement.

Undergraduate ASEs, once again, sacrificed some of their rights in order to help the departments stay afloat, Classon said. Thats why, by and large, undergraduate ASEs agreed to (the local agreement).

To ward off a future deficit, DeNero estimated campus had to cut instructional costs by $3 million for this year, partially due, he said, to a decline in state support for the UC system. In 2001, the state government provided UC Berkeley with $23,811 per student in 2021 USD, adjusted for inflation by DeNero. In 2021, that support dropped to $7,857 per student.

During his lecture, DeNero said computing courses provide so much benefit to students and society that they should be kept open, despite cost constraints.

In their first post-graduate jobs, the median data science, computer science and EECS graduate in the class of 2022 earned $103,000, $130,000 and $129,000, respectively, according to survey data from Berkeley Career Engagement.

DeNero added that tuition remission should be provided regardless of position to everyone; but given cost constraints, it should go to those who need it most irrespective of employment.

I tried to explain this to the labor unions, and we couldn't agree, DeNero said in his Dec. 1 CS 61A lecture, 15 minutes of which he reserved to speak about instructional labor costs. At that point I was like, I'm just not going to try to fight with my own students anymore Instead, I'll change the course in order to try to keep everything large and open as much as I can.

So this semester in CS 61A, DeNero decided to experiment with a new instructional model one with far fewer instructors. The fall 2023 course has two lecture sections: one with professor Satish Rao and another with DeNero.

Raos section resembles previous offerings of CS 61A. He enrolled about 1,000 students. To help run the course, he hired two GSIs and 17 uGSIs.

DeNero enrolled 375 students, but he hired only two GSIs and one uGSI a drastic cut in instructor time.

I think the way that you're supported is different, but I don't think you're undersupported, said E Harrison, a first-year student in DeNeros offering of the course. If you do need to talk to someone and you have a question, you're able to talk to someone.

Before entering the course, Harrison took AP Computer Science A in high school and an introductory data science course at UCLA. In fact, he said he pretty much knew the content up to tree recursion, which was introduced in week four.

Though Harrison does not doubt that students new to computer science may struggle to learn with much less student instructor attention, he may represent a good chunk of students in his section.

Up until a week before the semester started, Raos section reserved 390 seats for undeclared majors. In DeNeros section, all seats were reserved for CS, EECS and other engineering majors.

In DeNeros CS 61A, there was no instructor in the room during course discussions. Rather, discussions consisted of small groups of six to eight students, who could ask course staffers questions over Discord.

Labs had an instructor in the room for the beginning of the section, according to the syllabus, but they would leave and return only periodically. DeNero also changed lectures; instead of rehashing content from existing videos, he walked students through examples and sometimes reviewed content from discussions.

The course, however, also came with many supplemental resources not offered in other computer science courses.

Students could review the courses repository of hundreds of instructional videos, guides and worksheets. They could pose questions to a GPT-4-powered chatbot, whose development was sponsored by Microsoft, and get an immediate response.

I think that it's just a different way of teaching, Harrison said. If you're familiar with the other way, it might be kind of a shock.

In the course's mid-semester survey, DeNeros students rated instructional support 4.01 out of 5, even with their reduced course staff. Raos more conventional offering of the course got a rating of 3.72 from students.

In DeNeros section, 59% of students reported attending at least three-quarters of the lectures, compared to 50% of Raos students. However, Raos students rated discussions 3.98 out of 5 a bump up from DeNeros students 3.5 rating.

But according to preliminary results of the courses end-of-semester survey, DeNero said in an email that students who regularly attended his sections discussions were quite a bit happier about taking the course than those who regularly attended discussions with instructors in the room.

I think what weve seen is that this is not a total failure, and it does sort of change the possibility of keeping the course open, even under times of funding problems, DeNero said during the lecture, prompting a round of applause from students in the lecture hall. So I think in spring 2024, I'll try to scale it up.

This spring, there will be only one offering of CS 61A, and DeNero will teach it, according to the Berkeley Academic Guide.

While DeNeros spring 2024 offering of CS 61A is currently capped at 1,000 students, hiring is ongoing, so it is unclear how many or how few student instructors will staff the course. In an email, DeNero said he plans to allocate instructor time more to student-facing services and less to revising curricula, developing course software or carrying out administrative tasks.

Differentiated instruction that provides the right kind of support to each student is generally a good idea, DeNero said in an email. We'll keep trying to achieve that under the constraints imposed by limited financial support from the state and the ASE labor contract.

Since DeNeros experiments in CS 61A may reduce the role of academic workers in future offerings of the course, Classon said ASEs are surely concerned.

However, he believes in ASEs ability to stand against problematic behaviors which include slashing instructional staffing in courses.

ASEs are smart, said Classon, who was told by DeNero that he was unlikely to get a position in his spring 2024 offering of the course. And we know the department cant operate without us.

Classon was offered a position in CS 170, but it was for fewer hours than he preferred.

DeNeros offering of CS 61A is also just an experiment, separate from the many computing courses where instructional standards remain much the same as always.

Despite increases in labor costs, the student instructor time-to-enrollment ratio across fall 2023 computing courses resembles that of fall 2022, according to an analysis of data from UAW 2865, DeNero and the CalAnswers database by The Daily Californian. The ratio is the weekly number of minutes GSIs and uGSIs work per enrollment in EECS and DSUS courses.

Per week in fall 2022, EECS and DSUS student instructors worked about 17 minutes and 50 seconds per enrollment. In fall 2023, the weekly instructor time-to-enrollment ratio dropped just 9% to 16 minutes and 25 seconds.

Our ongoing analysis of GSI and uGSI time-to-enrollment ratios in EECS and DSUS courses is integral to ensuring appropriate instructional support, said campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore. While the instructional labor cost has increased, we continue to evaluate data to strike a balance between effective course support and cost efficiency.

But for some people, maintaining existing instructor time-to-enrollment ratios is just a continuation of an unfortunate status quo in UC Berkeleys computing education one where student instructors overwork themselves to get students the help they need.

Noemi Chulo, an undergraduate now in their second semester as a computing uGSI, is supposed to work eight hours per week in CS 195 and CS H195, both CS ethics courses. Nevertheless, they reported working at least 10 hours per week and on some weeks, up to 15 hours.

Whatever we have going on right now is not working, Chulo said about computing staffing on campus. Its just not feasible; the longer this goes on, the longer this falls apart.

To save on time, Chulo built an automated bot which flags and responds to students who have improperly formatted their assignments on the courses online forum.

Across computing courses, staff have automated the grading of many programming assignments, attendance, surveys, short-term extension requests and more. But automation, Chulo added, hasnt been enough to prevent overwork.

In the hours Chulo works, and in those they overwork, they said they choose between essential tasks: grading papers, responding to students questions or reviewing extension requests. Chulo added they do not have time to do things they would like to do such as providing more feedback to students in their honors section and reaching out to students who are falling behind.

The point is that understaffing is kind of everywhere, Chulo said. It's not really avoidable.

Classon said that in large computing courses such as Data 8 and CS 61A students sometimes wait hours in office hours queues and are not given adequate support.

Often in office hours, he said, course staffers must choose between staying longer with a student who is struggling, or moving onto the dozens of other students waiting in the queue.

That's a choice that I've had to make, Classon said. It breaks your heart every single time.

Since the ratification of the local agreement, the local union has also filed grievances against the university for alleged failure to fully implement student workers labor contracts.

About 230 of fall 2023s approximately 390 undergraduate and graduate computing ASEs signed a letter dated Nov. 14 to campus deans Jennifer Chayes and Tsu-Jae King Liu. The letter called for the campus to resolve outstanding grievances, remit allegedly shorted compensation and increase instructional funding.

The letter also alleged summer instructors paychecks were unduly cut $600. These instructors have yet to see their wages remitted, Classon alleged. Many campus employees, Classon alleged, also saw improper deductions to their compensation in May due to a payroll error. His own paycheck was 10% lower than expected that month because of the error. While those deductions have been remitted, he alleged workers are owed damages they have yet to see.

Gilmore said campus is committed to addressing UAW 2865 representees concerns and resolving related grievances.

Moreover, on Nov. 21, Classon said he and other computing ASEs were invited to a Dec. 4 meeting with several campus representatives including vice provost Oliver OReilly and chief HR officer Eugene Whitlock to discuss their letter and the concerns it shared.

There are many outstanding issues in EECS and data science, Classon said. But we really appreciate every opportunity to collaborate with the university in improving instructional and working conditions.

See the original post here:

Computing staff and faculty dispute cash-strapped public education and employment - Daily Californian