How Do I Effectively Work with TAs?
Synopsis:
Dr. Kimberly Gaus has not yet worked with teaching assistants (TAs), but she is about to teach a course with two TAs. While she prepares for the circuits class, she is faced with multiple questions about how to effectively work with TAs. She turns to her department chair for advice.
Dr. Kimberly Gaus has not yet worked with teaching assistants (TAs), but she is about to teach a course with two TAs. While she prepares for the circuits class, she is faced with multiple questions about how to effectively work with TAs. She turns to her department chair for advice.
Full Story:
The next term starts in three weeks and Assistant Professor Kimberly Gaus is preparing a class that she’ll teach for the first time: a 200-level analog circuits class. The class is expected to enroll 120 engineering students, so the electrical engineering department set up six sections of recitation and six sections of circuits lab.
The next term starts in three weeks and Assistant Professor Kimberly Gaus is preparing a class that she’ll teach for the first time: a 200-level analog circuits class. The class is expected to enroll 120 engineering students, so the electrical engineering department set up six sections of recitation and six sections of circuits lab.
Strategies Menu
The department assigned her two graduate students, Jan and YanLin, to run these sections. Recalling the departmental convention, she assumes that being a TA for this class means running the recitation section, grading homework, running the lab section, and holding office hours. One has some experience as a TA, but this is the other’s first formal teaching position.
This class is the first time Kimberly has used TAs. She's a bit worried because she has heard some faculty complain about their TAs and she recalls ineffective TAs who taught when she was a student.
When picturing the complexity of working with TAs, many questions come up for her. How do they set standards for fair and consistent grading? Should the TAs independently prepare the lab activities? Should she expect the TAs to attend every lecture?
Also, YanLin is a native Chinese speaker whose accent is often difficult to understand. Kimberly suspects some students will be frustrated with his accent. What can she do to support YanLin? What else must she consider when supervising TAs?
She talked to her department chair about this. He offered a few suggestions to help her in this role of manager:
- Meet with your TAs early and regularly. Set up a schedule to meet with your TAs once a week throughout the term. Each week you should discuss the topics to be covered in lecture, students’ questions that arise in the sections, and future lab exercises. Consider delegating lab preparations to the TAs, reserving your role as reviewer of their plans. If possible, kick off your collaborative efforts by first all meeting with an instructional consultant, whose guidance might make everything go smoother.
- To ensure TAs grade consistently, develop a grading rubric for TAs to use and then check their grading for fairness and consistency. Give them feedback so they can improve their grading skills.
- Help your TAs find support for their teaching. Suggest that they sign up for teaching workshops. Since some TAs go onto faculty positions, introducing them to an instructional consultant could provide them a beneficial professional relationship.
- Suggest to the international TA ways he can help his students who might not understand his accent, such as bringing up language differences at the beginning of the term, writing instructions out, and encouraging clarifying questions. Also remember that international TAs may have difficulty understanding students.
Inspired by the recommendations from her department chair, Kimberly immediately set up a meeting with Jan and YanLin and began working as a team to teach the electrical circuits students.