Throughout your time at Queen’s you may take on a role (or many roles!) as a Teaching Assistant (TA). Teaching at the undergraduate or graduate levels may be a new experience, or you might have prior experiences from another school, college, or university or in a different educational context. Regardless, it can be helpful to learn a bit about what you might expect with your TA role at Queen’s and some strategies for setting you up for success as you start your role, engage with students in different learning environments, and work towards becoming a confident and skilled educator.
What are the TA Essentials?
TA Essentials is a series of five (5) online, self-paced, modules that have been designed to give you an introduction to TAing at Queen’s. They focus on many different areas of your TA role, from seminar and discussion facilitation, grading and providing feedback, and using different educational technologies. Approaches for developing your skills and strategies as an inclusive and accessible educator are woven through all five modules as we aim to help you become an inclusive educator in all the different facets of your role. Topics on accessibility, anti-racism, and inclusive pedagogy are detailed in more depth in Module 2: Inclusion: I-EDIAA at Queen’s and Module 3: Accessibility and Academic Accommodations and Considerations.
The TA Essentials modules were built from another resource called the TA Toolkit which was developed by the Educational Development Associates (EDA) at the Centre for Teaching and Learning. While the TA Toolkit is an online resource page on the CTL website, the TA Essentials have created a more interactive way to present the materials – offering you opportunities to think through scenarios, brainstorm your own teaching preferences, as well offer some great tips from current and past TAs.
The TA Essentials is meant to offer guidance across many topics that you might encounter in your TA role and is meant for all TAs at Queens, regardless of your home department or discipline. These modules may not include everything that you need to be successful in your specific role and should be used in conjunction with information from your course instructor. There may be processes and policies specific to your department or the type of TA roles and responsibilities that you have. In addition to reading this resource, it is essential to keep in contact with the course instructor you are working with in order to best understand the expectations of your role.
The TA Essentials modules were built as 5 separate online modules. They can be completed in any order, however if you are a new TA or intend to review all modules, we have numbered them in the order that we feel offers the best learning experience. There is no set time allotment to complete the modules and you can come back to them at any time (whether you just need a break or you want to visit a module next year!).
Module 1: What is TAing?
This module will introduce you to the landscape of being a TA at Queen’s. It explores the different roles and responsibilities you might have in a TA role, as well as important information around your professional responsibilities in maintaining student privacy.
Module 2: Inclusion: I-EDIAA at Queen’s University
This module focuses on our responsibility as educators to foster inclusive learning environments. It provides strategies that you might consider in your own teaching and resources on how you can continue to grow and learn your practice.
Module 3: Accessibility & Academic Accommodations and Considerations
In module 3 the focus is on building our accessible teaching practices so that we foster and promote the inclusion of students with disabilities in our classrooms. This module explores universal design for learning as one framework for rethinking our teaching, as well as our policies and processes at Queen’s for academic accommodations and considerations.
Module 4: Assignments and Exams
Almost all TA roles include some element of grading student work or providing feedback. This modules explores what makes feedback effective for student learning and some strategies on how you can accomplish your marking work in time-efficient ways that supports students in achieving course learning outcomes.
Module 5: Educational Technology
The final modules explores the ‘how’ and ‘where’ much of our TA work takes place – in the online space. Regardless of whether you are TAing an on-campus or online course, having a good understanding of onQ, our learning management system, and what other educational technologies we have at Queen’s can help you in your communication with students and how we interact and engage with students through technology.
Continue Your Professional Development
Need to search for a topic or more information from the modules? The TA Toolkit is an online resource page from the CTL that includes similar information to the TA Essentials modules but is navigated as a webpage.
The CTL offers a number of different workshops, sessions, or institutes throughout the year that are geared towards different educators – from graduate students to faculty. Keeping an eye on Upcoming Events Calendar is a great way to see at a glance what is coming up. You can also sign up for the .
The Professional Development in University Teaching and Learning (PUTL) modules are a series of online, self-paced modules for any graduate student or postdoctoral fellow interested in teaching and learning. They span topics across teaching and learning practices, leadership, and inclusive pedagogy. Each module engages you in an activity to help you reflect on, and articulate, your teaching experiences. Participating in PUTL can also be a great way to develop many parts of your teaching dossier and future course syllabus!
SGS 902 is a credit course is intended for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows across the disciplines who want to develop as skilled, thoughtful, and confident post-secondary teachers. The goal of this course is to challenge and broaden conceptions of learning and approaches to teaching. Sessions will be literature-informed but activity and discussion-based with an expectation of a high degree of collaboration and participation. SGS 902 is typically offered in the Winter term.
The Educational Development Associates (EDA) program is an internship-like opportunity for graduate students with an interest in teaching and learning who work at the CTL to support peer educators on campus.
The EDA team can support graduate students, Teaching Assistants and Teaching Fellows with individual or group consultations about syllabus design or teaching dossiers, as well as classroom teaching observations (both virtual and in-person). The EDA team can be reached at TA&GradCTL@queensu.ca
Contact for Further Support on Using these Modules
If you are an instructor, department, or Faculty interested in using these module as part of a course or TA mentorship activity in your unit, please contact the CTL at ctl@queensu.ca. We would be happy to meet with you and determine how we can collaborate on supporting the TAs and graduate and postdoctoral educators in your unit.
lets others remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and indicate if changes were made. Use this citation format: TA Essentials. Centre for Teaching and Learning, Queen’s University