Evaluation and Assessment | Teaching Practices |Teaching with Technology| Sample Course Evaluation Forms
Teaching Tools
2. Teaching Practices
2.6. Graduate Teaching Assistant Information
Common Types of TA Responsibilities
Lead recitation sections
- Review main points/difficult parts of lectures.
- Discuss examples in detail.
- Respond to questions about homework.
- May create and give quizzes.
- Often grade, hold office hours and conduct review sessions.
- Attend TA/staff meetings to coordinate activities across sections.
Lead discussion sections
- Discuss key course concepts based on assigned reading, writing or in-class exercises.
- Guide students on writing assignments.
- May create and give quizzes or homework.
- Typically grade and hold office hours.
- Attend TA/staff meetings to coordinate activities across sections.
Assist in laboratories
- Monitor ongoing student work in technical courses.
- Respond to questions about experiments, methods, equipment and software.
- Ensure student safety.
- May give brief pre-lab lectures.
- Often grade lab reports.
Assist in studios
- Monitor ongoing student work in fine arts courses.
- Respond to questions about projects, exercises, techniques or software.
- Assist with desk critiques or other face-to-face feedback.
- May create assignments.
Grade
- Follow criteria provided by the professor.
- Often create grading keys for homework.
- May collaborate on creating grading criteria for exams, papers, computer programs and projects.
- Provide constructive comments on individual students' work.
- Prepare detailed solution sets for homework.
- May assist students in office hours, review sessions or computer clusters.
Supervise group projects
- Meet with project groups in or out of class.
- Guide students' choices of approaches.
- Assist in providing feedback on intermediate stages of the project.
- Provide information on useful resources.
- May be involved in grading final projects.
Hold office hours
- Be available regularly and by appointment to answer students' questions about course material.
- Contact students who are having significant difficulties to offer assistance.
- May provide tutoring for students whose backgrounds are weak in key areas.
Conduct review sessions
- Summarize major concepts
- Answer students' questions as regular review or prior to an exam.
- May prepare a written review sheet for exams or present a summary of the most important points.
- Provide students with supervised practice answering exam-like questions.
Adapted from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University
