During the Semester
Practical steps to keep your team working well together
Integrate communication
Set up norms between TAs and students
- Introduce TAs at the start of the semester as instructional colleagues and course leaders.
- Be clear about what types of questions or concerns should be brought to you and what should be brought to the TAs.
Instructor example: Communication
From the L&S Exchange Podcast, Episode 22
“As an instructor, whether you have one TA you’re working with, or I’ve been in situations where I’ve been working with 12 TAs, you want to be in regular contact with your teaching assistant collaborators as well. We meet every week to go over what’s happening so that we can assess in real time, we can talk out all of those situations together.”
— Greg Downey, Evjue-Bascom Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Have a weekly meeting
A regularly scheduled meeting helps you maintain two-way communication, share important updates, and anticipate challenges.
- Team-building activities
- Check-in: i.e., what’s happening in the classroom, are there any ongoing issues
- Course admin: i.e., coordinating exam proctoring, upcoming due dates
- Reminders about relevant course policies
- Upcoming learning outcomes and class activities
- Pedagogical discussions: L&S Mini Discussions provide structured conversation themes to easily integrate into meetings
- Early on: Getting to know your students, learning student names, establishing positive classroom environments
- As the semester progresses: Assessment strategies, academic integrity, sustainable teaching practices, etc.
- At specific points in the semester, such as after major assessments or when the drop deadline is approaching, consider a team conversation to identify students at risk of failing. Then consider next steps: will someone approach these students? Who? How will they offer support and lay out options?
- At the end of the semester: How to productively read student feedback
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Check in on TA workload
- TAs should not work more than the hours listed in their appointment letters. Adjusting individual TAs’ approaches (communication, lesson planning, grading strategies) or course structures (assignment design, grading rubrics, turnaround time) can help make workloads sustainable.
- Ask TAs: Can they think of TA expectations or assignment directions that should be reexamined?
TA perspective
“One instructor prioritized meeting with his TAs (there were four of us) every week. We spoke about the topic for the upcoming week and the main ideas/concepts that he wanted the students to take from the lectures. Then he gave us the space to think through and plan our discussion section lessons.”
— Morgan Henson, TA in Sociology
Structure support
Coordinate assessment
To ensure grading consistency across sections:
- Host grading sessions, including some norming practice.
- Monitor each team members’ average scores, especially on early assignments.
- Are there tools you can share with your team? These might be: Expectations about the type and amount of feedback they should offer, grading rubrics, or sample graded work.
- Ensure that equitable grading practices, such as anonymizing assignments in Canvas, are applied equally across the teaching team.
- Ensure McBurney accommodations for exam proctoring and assignments are applied consistently.
Facilitate resource sharing
When experienced TAs move on, a wealth of knowledge and built materials often leaves with them. How can you help TAs connect with successful models that can improve your course over time?
- Consider a repository (e.g. shared Google Drive) where TAs can share teaching resources, lesson plans, etc. If an archive already exists, connect your team to these materials.
- Collect (or create) model responses to assignments, essays, and exam questions.
Instructor example: Sharing best practices
From the L&S Exchange Podcast, Episode 23
“…That’s what our staff meetings are. They’re best practice meetings. …And it’s so fun. It’s such a fun series of meetings and we end up with lesson plans and activities that then we can use again in future semesters.”
— Sarah Jedd, Teaching Faculty in Communication Arts
Develop a mentoring relationship
Open dialogue about teaching can prevent problems and develop your TAs’ individual teaching skills. Instructors have found it helpful to:
- Share your experiences, challenges, and insights.
- Ask about TAs’ teaching experiences and goals, actively listen, and offer support when appropriate.
- Touch base by email to see if there are ways you can help your team succeed.
- Hold individual TA meetings at mid-semester in which you ask about each TA’s successes and biggest challenges. This could replace one of your regular meetings. Then you can provide individualized concrete support and resources.
- Help your teaching team connect to experienced TAs in your department and to each other.
- Help your teaching team connect to college- or campus-level instructional consulting services (such as CTLM, L&S IDC, CEETE)
- Remember the power differential between you and your TAs. Have a plan for how a TA can raise a concern if they don’t feel comfortable bringing it directly to you.
Whether students submit evaluations during the semester or only at the end, your team may be unfamiliar with reading anonymous student feedback.
You might find it helpful to:
- Be sure everyone is aware of when students will submit evaluations.
- Discuss strategies for reviewing and incorporate student feedback during a group meeting.
- Anonymously aggregate the comments for students in all sections and review them as a team.
TA observation & formative feedback
Departmental support for observations
Department staff may be willing to assist with managing observations, which is especially helpful in large and complex teaching teams.
Even as an individual instructor, you may find the form below to be a helpful starting point for your own observations.
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Observe your teaching team
Observations can help instructors be informed about TA teaching and provide TAs with formative feedback.
- Observe early enough so that TAs have time to incorporate feedback.
- Ask TAs if there is anything in particular they would like feedback on.
- Have a follow-up conversation to discuss what you observed.
An observation template can be useful to guide your observation and ensure you provide actionable feedback to TAs. A few examples are provided below.
Click the button below to download the file, or make a copy of the Google Doc in a new browser tab.
TA perspective
“The best use of these observations was in the brief
1-on-1s that I’d have with my observer that gave me actionable feedback. I like hearing ‘You’re doing really well!’ but appreciated ‘I like how you manage your classroom, but don’t be afraid to sit more in silence to give students a chance to process and respond to your question‘ so much more because it allowed me to look at my teaching practices, make a plan, and improve.”
— Rachel Hanger, TA in Mathematics
Advance student learning
Partner with TAs on innovative course content
As graduate students, TAs are often working on research at the cutting edge of their field. They also have a perspective informed by their prior education and experience.
Partnership might look like:
- Learning about your team’s research and teaching expertise.
- Allowing TAs to redesign a lesson or activity incorporating their own advanced knowledge on course topics and methods.
- Pursuing mutual interests for course development.
Increase classroom belonging and student success
TAs bring different perspectives on what is happening in the class than what you will have as the lead instructor. Their insights may allow you to have a more nuanced view of your course and shape it more effectively for all students.
Teaching team example: Creating new curriculum
Dr. Nick Hill, Organic Lab Director in the Department of Chemistry, and Philip Lampkin, TA and PhD Student, collaborated on new undergraduate curriculum.
To accelerate his research efforts, Philip designed an open-source, 3D-printed photoreactor.1 Dr. Nick Hill recognized his innovation’s potential for chemistry education and partnered with Philip to develop a module for CHEM 346: Advanced Organic Chemistry Lab.
How did this impact students and the course?
Undergraduates engaged in this teaching module use Philip’s photoreactor to perform several photochemical reactions. Students employ cutting-edge analytical, computational, and experimental techniques to assess factors controlling reaction outcomes while building expertise in modern synthetic chemistry methods. The teaching experiment was implemented in Fall 2021 and has remained a fixture of CHEM 346 ever since.
What made this collaboration possible, and how might other teaching teams do the same?
This work involved close collaboration between graduate students and teaching faculty. The latter cohort have extensive experience in curriculum development and effective assessment but may not be familiar with cutting-edge research topics. Graduate students, like Philip, are research experts but may be unfamiliar or inexperienced with development of a curriculum. Building partnerships between teaching faculty and graduate students maximizes the strengths of both parties, facilitates the growth of each group, and enables the production of innovative and pedagogically-sound curricula.
[1] https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.orglett.1c01910
Philip & Nick discussed their partnership on a panel at the 2024 UW Teaching and Learning Symposium.
What if?
If a teaching team member is not completing work on time — like grading, lesson preparation, or other tasks — the following may be helpful approaches:
- Ask questions to identify the scope and context of the situation. What work is not being completed? What are the influencing factors? What does your team member think might be helpful?
- Consider your options for support, including offices, administrators, and supervisors. (For more, see the “Concerns about a TA’s work performance” tab.)
- Form a plan with your TA for how the work will get completed. Instructors have found it helpful to structure mini-deadlines (such as a certain amount of assessment completed per week) or develop other forms of supportive scheduling.
If you have concerns about a TA’s work performance, a good first practice can be communicating directly with the TA. A question-forward approach can be helpful in learning the landscape and collaboratively building a plan to move forward.
For additional support, consider consulting:
- Your department leadership about standard practices.
- Your local HR for guidance on the formal performance management process.
- If you are in L&S, support is available from L&S HR and the Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Academic Affairs.
A wide range of student challenges can show up over a semester. The following are key campus resources:
- Academic Misconduct: Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards
- Refer a student for additional support: Report a Student of Concern
- The Office of Student Assistance and Support will any student who you may be experiencing personal, financial, health, mental health challenges or is displaying behaviors that may interfere with their own success or disrupt the learning of others.
- Disability and accommodations: McBurney Disability Resource Center
When you don’t know how to respond, or would like additional support beyond your department, the Office of Student Assistance and Support is a primary resource.