Supporting the role of teaching assistants in online teaching
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, there has been an increasing move towards online teaching. Delivering large scale teaching online comes with a myriad of challenges. A lesson we have learnt by delivering such a course unit at the University of Manchester, was the vital part of employing teaching assistants (TAs) to support the students’ learning experience and make learning more engaging and interactive.
Here, we discuss the practical steps we took in organising and supporting the role of TAs in the fully online undergraduate unit AI: Robot Overlord, Replacement or Colleague? (referred to as Robot Overlord) which since then have been adopted in various other units across faculties. We also provide a set of templates and a TA starting pack, we have used to support the TAs.
The role of TAs
The primary role of TAs in this unit is to provide on-going support to the students and facilitate their journey towards achieving knowledge. They act as a compass guiding the students through the teaching materials pointing them to the right direction.
In this new normality, where almost all human interaction happens online, TAs also play a vital part in building a sense of community and belonging with our students. They actively engage with the students on a weekly basis providing on-going support to both summative and formative activities.
The selection process
We originally had a pool of candidates (all PhD students from a variety of disciplines) to select from. We have asked them to complete a form that gathers information on previous experience in teaching and their domain knowledge on the topics covered in this unit. There is a copy of the form we have used in the ‘Resources’ section below.
We then went through the completed forms and selected the candidates that fulfilled our requirements. We made sure to include candidates from several disciplines and backgrounds, but also from different levels of study. Third and fourth year PhD students often have more experience on teaching and can bring their own ideas into it. Similarly and equally important, are the 1st and 2nd year TAs who will be part of the team for longer.
As a result of this unusually quite extensive process of selecting the TAs, we have observed that the selected TAs were highly motivated. The Robot Overlord TAs often went further than their pre-assigned responsibilities to help and support the students.
“The unit is very well run and make great use of mixed media to provide a very involved and interactive teaching experience. The platform and delivery of this course is even more important at the moment as more courses look to move online, and it has been a great experience.” Aj Mubarik, Robot Overlord TA 2019–2020
The training process
Up until now we held a two-hour face to face briefing session just before the beginning of the semester to train the successful candidates. We will now have to move this session online using a video conferencing tool. The agenda for the online training session we will have on September is as follows:
- Introductions of course educators and TAs
- Course unit aims and objectives
- TAs roles and responsibilities — examples can be found in the TA handbook available in the ‘Resources’ section below
- Students’ personas (this is particularly useful in interdisciplinary units — example can be found in the TA handbook)
- Overview of assessment process and components
- Guidelines on providing constructive feedback — template in the ‘Resources’ section below
- Tools and platforms that will be used throughout the semester
- Supporting documents (i.e. timesheets, TA handbook, assessment rubrics) and next steps
- Q&A
This coming academic year, we will focus more on training the TAs regarding their interaction and engagement with the students in particularly two aspects: 1. to provide constructive feedback to the students enabling them to improve their skills and knowledge and 2. to provide empathetic support to the students while staying true to marking schemes, processes and deadlines.
We are planning to achieve this by exploring guidelines on how to provide constructive feedback, and analyse examples to avoid. We will also analyse examples of ‘student personas’ that we had over the years, emphasising that they come from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds and that we have to embrace and facilitate different ways of thinking and working, even more now in these difficult and testing times that we all have to adjust into.
“Truly, it was a great experience to be part of the team. The training provided by yourself (the course leader) and others was great which really made us capable of delivering this course successfully. Although, it was our first time but it felt like we knew exactly what to do.” Omer Muhammad, Robot Overlord TA 2019–2020
TAs roles and responsibilities
We have two roles for the Robot Ovelord TAs: a TA tutor and a TA lead. The TA tutor is the students’ first point of contact and is responsible to support the learning of the students and establish rapport in the group activities. Similarly, the TA lead is the tutor’s first point of contact and is responsible to support the tutors, monitor communication channels and ensure that groups are treated fairly and in a consistent manner.
TA lead:
- Support other TAs with any questions they might have for the teaching materials and the groupwork activities.
- Support the marking: Ensure marking across teams is fair and consistent
- Set up tools and make sure platforms work as intended
- Report any issues to the course educator in a timely fashion.
TAs:
- Support the learning of students.
- Establish rapport in the groups and cohort-wide.
- Flag up any learning or technical issues and report to the course educators as soon as possible.
- Monitor and contribute to the discussion forums and reply back to learners’ questions in a constructive way.
- Gather feedback and report back to educators in a timely manner.
Supporting the TA team
Support networks
To provide on-going support to both TAs and students alike, we have estabished a TA support network, as shown in the figure. Students in the course unit are assigned into groups in which they have to collaborate to complete weekly assignments and group-based activities. Each group is being assigned their personal TA tutor who is their first point of contact, marks and provides feedback for the groupwork activities.
Further information on models to deliver group-based activities online can be found in the following stories:
TA starting pack
At the end of the training session, we circulate to the team of TAs a TA starting pack, with all the documents, templates and guidelines they will need throughout the semester. The pack includes:
1. Weekly student submission templates
We found that providing submission templates to students gives them a structure on what is expected every week, and also a universal document to collect all evidences that our TAs need to monitor, assess and give feedback. In the first part of every submission template students have to fill in the names of the people from the group who contributed towards this week’s activities. We also ask them to briefly comment on how the group functioned that week, comment on any obstacles they had to face, and how they allocated and distributed the work among the group. An example of this template can be found in the ‘Resources’ section.
2. TA weekly checklists
Similarly, we produced weekly checklists for the TAs, listing all the tasks, resources and deadlines that TAs have to do each week. Each week’s checklist was distributed through email (and on our communication platform) just before the week started. TA leads contributed in the production of these checklists and were responsible to send reminders for tasks not completed. A checklist can be found in the ‘Resources’ section below.
3. TA handbook
The TA handbook includes all relevant information regarding the team and the aims and objectives of the unit. It also covers the principles and guidelines in which the unit runs, the marking and moderation process and finally tips on how to provide constructive feedback.
Communication
We have established continuous on-going communication channels with the TA leads, TA tutors and course educators in this unit using the Slack platform. Slack provides instant text messages between the team members and supports desktop and mobile notifications. Using Slack we have ensured that effective continuous communication has been established between the Robot Overlord team.
Resources
In the following Google Drive folder you can find templates and resources to help organise and support your TA network.
- TA selection form
- Example of a TA weekly checklist
- TA handbook
- TA marking guidelines
- Example of student submission template
Author
Dr Iliada Eleftheriou — Lecturer in Healthcare Sciences at the University of Manchester, specialising in Health Informatics. Leading the AI: Robot Overlord, Replacement or Colleague? large scale interdisciplinary course unit, and co-leading various other online health informatics and data science postgraduate units.
