COVID struggles: undergraduate teaching assistants balance teaching and learning during a pandemic

Undergraduate teaching assistants (UTAs) have become valuable collaborators with faculty in large undergraduate first-year classes. Their participation requires them to manage their teaching duties and their own learning. The pandemic posed unusual problems for them. Here, two students, along with their instructor, provide an inside look. Throughout the pandemic, UTAs were found to increase their efforts during tutorials in attempts to help ensure that students were more prepared and engaged through the online learning formats. New strategies were implemented to maintain student attendance and participation in class, which greatly increased the workload for UTAs. Students not turning on their cameras and speaking up in online classes made teaching more tiring and stressful, which was compounded by the already present "Zoom fatigue" during online education. UTAs found real challenges in balancing senior year classes and extracurriculars with preparation for tutorials, especially closer to assignment or exam deadlines when the engagement and questions from students would sharply increase. Despite numerous efforts and adaptations made by UTAs to adjust to the impacts of the pandemic, online learning was an immense challenge to both students and teachers in comparison to the in-person formats.