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About the TA role

About the TA role

TAs are usually current students at ITU or recent graduates who support teaching and learning on Courses or Study Lab.
In addition to the specific TA tasks, you can also expect to be an integral and valuable part of a teaching team and gain relevant job experience.

TAs are never allowed to assess exams.

TA tasks

Exactly what the TA role entails, depends on the type of course, the preferences of the teachers, and to a certain extent the size and composition of the student cohort you will TA for.

Typical TA tasks include the following listed below

A teacher teaching

Teaching and Exercises

• being present at exercises for Q&A, help and instructions

• carrying out quizzes or polls

• making small presentations

• giving feedback or instructions to students

• facilitating reading groups

• leading small group discussions or activities

Q and A

Communicating with students

• be the go-betweener between students and teachers

• answering and forwarding questions from students after class

• facilitating feedback to students and from students to the course teachers

Notes pinned up on a board

Course Administration

• undertaking various course administrative tasks, f.ex. updating LearnIT, organizing supervision schedules or collect background data about students’ skills to help teachers plan content and progression

• conducting group formation or assign groups

• print handouts, organise supplies

Pen and paper

Assignments

• Supervising student group project collaboration

• Coaching students on individual assignments

• Correcting assignments

• Checking mandatory activities in cases where the mandatory activities have a right or a wrong answer (which is predefined by the course teacher) and answers are qualified by the teacher

• Facilitating peer-to-peer feedback processes but must be properly instructed by the course teachers

As a TA, you can also expect to

  • participate in regular meetings with teaching teams
  • participate in TA workshop run by Learning Support (mandatory)
  • be asked to be present at lectures
  • mediate in groups (but be ready to refer to Student Counsellors)
  • refer questions about study activities, course registrations or other administrative questions regarding studying to SAP.

What is a good TA?

What a good TA is will differ from course to course, but generally speaking, you should be interested in helping other students, be a good communicator and not be afraid of speaking to people and take action where required but also know when to pass the ball to others.

In addition to your interpersonal skills, some courses also require that you have good grasp of specific academic or technical skills, for example quantitative methods, certain programming languages, academic writing etc. You need not necessarily be an expert, but you should be able to communicate your knowledge.