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Discussion sections should be abolished.

OK, perhaps that’s too extreme a statement, but I wouldn’t mind some reform.

In the ideal case, discussion sections are meant to make huge lower-division classes more personal. They should stimulate discussion (hence the name), build upon ideas presented in class, and even (when really successful) foster bonds between the students and teaching assistants.

For graduate student Awad Awad, who is a TA for an Introduction to Islam class, his role is like that of a translator of ideas. When working with the students, he said, “I speak to them in their own language. I make analogies, cultural references and jokes.”

Since UCLA can be a university that seems too large and impersonal, TAs like this are much like the gatekeepers to a better-integrated system of undergraduates, graduates and professors.

Communication studies Professor Tim Groeling believes that students will benefit from a teaching assistant in “faceless” introductory courses until they reach the smaller and more personal upper division classes.

At the same time, he thinks that teaching assistants benefit from the experience as well. “TA support is an excellent, appropriate way for graduate students to support themselves ... build up expertise and relationships with professors in their field of study and prepare them for teaching in that field,” he said.

Awad agrees, noting that being a teaching assistant has convinced him that he wants to pursue teaching in higher education, and has also trained him for the experience.

In my capacity as an undergraduate, I agree with them – when a discussion section is effective, my understanding of the subject becomes highly refined. Too often, though, I have heard of and experienced sections that are a waste of time.

They are headed by TAs who do no more than regurgitate facts, and who seem not to care about being there.

When these failed sections are made mandatory by either the professor or the teaching assistant, against my better judgement, I feel like that is only adding insult to injury.

Suddenly it’s like I’m back in elementary school with a bad case of ADD.

The problem of the bad discussion section, I thought, first lies in the ineffective abilities of the teaching assistant. When I found out that the campus offered training workshops through the Office of Instructional Development, but did not make them mandatory, I thought I had found the problem and the easy solution.

Make TA training workshops mandatory. The end. My column is done.

However, Kumiko Haas, the associate director of Instructional Improvement Programs at OID, explained why that would not work.

“The difficulty with any kind of TA training,” Haas said, “is that each discipline is so different in what is needed.” To offset that difficulty, OID provides “the general tools to help the departments train their TAs.”

Thus, though the workshops are not mandatory, each department is required to provide some kind of training service for the TAs. OID functions as a service for these requirements, and Haas thinks that’s better than mandatory workshops.

“There’s a benefit that we have some kind of overall structure ... but I don’t think that a really rigorous, top-down policy would work – just because it’s so different from what is needed.” Furthermore, she said that TAs have a lot of their own work as graduate students, which can make a mandatory program difficult to implement.

Haas mentioned an interesting program that might help bored TAs and students. The Collegium of University Teaching Fellows provides experienced teaching assistants with the opportunity to teach a class on a subject that is directly related to their own specific field of study.

The undergraduate students who can take it – usually freshmen and sophomores – benefit from the TA’s cutting-edge research and the small seminar-style class. One such class offered this quarter is History 98T, titled Mystic Chords of Memory: The U.S. Civil War in 20th Century Popular Culture. Interesting.

Through programs like these, the TAs will have an opportunity to both study and teach what they are most interested in. An instructor experienced and excited about the subject makes for a more interesting class.

But this program is very small – only around 14 applicants are accepted into the program each year campus wide. This is because of issues with funding, training and keeping the program competitive, as well as other factors.

We need more programs like these. They should be supported, and others like them should be created. Haas assured me that it’s not an easy task, but I’ve never been afraid of a challenge.

As for bored or well-meaning TAs in introductory classes, their ineffectiveness should show in their evaluations. Once the department notices bad reviews, it should require the TA to attend a workshop, or help him or her to realize that some are not meant for teaching.

That should eventually curb the number of ineffective professors. After all, teaching is an art. But that is another column altogether.

There. Now I am done.

Hashem looks forward to becoming a TA someday. E-mail her at nhashem@media.ucla.edu.