Graduate Teaching Assistant Orientation for STEM

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Graduate Teaching Assistant Orientation for STEM

• Before We Get Started
• Sign in on computers
• Turn in your Student Information Card
• Take lime green survey form out of packet
• Complete Pre-Survey side of the form

Sponsored by Center for Instructional Excellence
(CIE) Committee for the Education of Teaching
Assistants (CETA)
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Facilitators

• Name
• Department

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Managing Teaching Assistant Responsibilities
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GoalTo efficiently and effectively manage the
different roles and responsibilities you may face
as a Teaching Assistant.
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Objectives

• Identify strategies for handling/minimizing
  disruptive classroom behavior.
• Discuss the advantages and limitations of
  communicating with students via email.
• Identify appropriate policies and successful
  strategies for facilitating effective
  communication with students via email.
• Identify successful strategies for answering
  student questions during office hours.
• Identify successful strategies for grading
  student assignments.
• Identify strategies for creating and maintaining
  effective relationships with students and Faculty
  Supervisors.

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Objectives

• Identify strategies for handling/minimizing
  disruptive classroom behavior.
• Discuss the advantages and limitations of
  communicating with students via email.
• Identify appropriate policies and successful
  strategies for facilitating effective
  communication with students via email.
• Identify successful strategies for answering
  student questions during office hours.
• Identify successful strategies for grading
  student assignments.
• Identify strategies for creating and maintaining
  effective relationships with students and Faculty
  Supervisors.

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What are disruptive classroom behaviors?

• Introducing
• Tom Turpin
• Professor of Entomology
• The Bug Man

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Disruptive Classroom Behaviors

• Arriving late
• Eating in class
• Talking in class
• Tending to personal needs
• Making inappropriate comments
• Engaging in activities not related to class
• Sleeping
• Leaving early

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Questions
Disruptive Behaviors

• Arriving late / leaving early
• In lab, frustration with experiment leads a team
  to start moving around and asking other teams for
  their results
• Engaging in activities not related to lab or class

• In what way(s) is this behavior disruptive to
  learning in the lab?
• How would you handle this problem if it happened
  in your lab?
• How can this problem be prevented?

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Tips for Handling Disruptive Behavior

• Prevention is key
• Decide what is disruptive to you and inform your
  class, orally and in writing
• Enforce rules that you establish
• Handle problems in least severe way possible first

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Objectives

• Identify strategies for handling/minimizing
  disruptive classroom behavior.
• Discuss the advantages and limitations of
  communicating with students via email.
• Identify appropriate policies and successful
  strategies for facilitating effective
  communication with students via email.
• Identify successful strategies for answering
  student questions during office hours.
• Identify successful strategies for grading
  student assignments.
• Identify strategies for creating and maintaining
  effective relationships with students and Faculty
  Supervisors.

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Tips for Managing Email

• Respond as quickly as possible.
• Ask students to include the course in the
  subject line.
• Explicitly communicate expectations about email
  contact to students.
• Save all email contacts.

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Tips for Managing Email (cont)

• If a student emails you in anger,
• assess reason
• wait to respond
• stay professional
• meet with the student

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Objectives

• Identify strategies for handling/minimizing
  disruptive classroom behavior.
• Discuss the advantages and limitations of
  communicating with students via email.
• Identify appropriate policies and successful
  strategies for facilitating effective
  communication with students via email.
• Identify successful strategies for answering
  student questions during office hours.
• Identify successful strategies for grading
  student assignments.
• Identify strategies for creating and maintaining
  effective relationships with students and Faculty
  Supervisors.

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Office Hours

• Give a person a fish
• Ask them questions
• Lead them towards the answer
• There isnt always 1 correct way to get to the
  answer
• Have them explain how they got where they are

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Objectives

• Identify strategies for handling/minimizing
  disruptive classroom behavior.
• Discuss the advantages and limitations of
  communicating with students via email.
• Identify appropriate policies and successful
  strategies for facilitating effective
  communication with students via email.
• Identify successful strategies for answering
  student questions during office hours.
• Identify successful strategies for grading
  student assignments.
• Identify strategies for creating and maintaining
  effective relationships with students and Faculty
  Supervisors.

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Tips for Grading

• Maintain an accurate and up-to-date record of all
  student grades
• Tell students how much a question/
  assignment/exam is worth
• Clarify policies regarding partial credit, late
  submissions and re-grades

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Tips for Grading (cont)

• Develop a grading rubric
• Discuss rubrics with fellow TAs if more than one
  TA does the grading
• Provide timely and sufficient feedback on
  assignments/exams
• Know the policies regarding student privacy rights

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Objectives

• Identify strategies for handling/minimizing
  disruptive classroom behavior.
• Discuss the advantages and limitations of
  communicating with students via email.
• Identify appropriate policies and successful
  strategies for facilitating effective
  communication with students via email.
• Identify successful strategies for answering
  student questions during office hours.
• Identify successful strategies for grading
  student assignments.
• Identify strategies for creating and maintaining
  effective relationships with students and Faculty
  Supervisors.

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Tips for Establishing Maintaining Relationship
with Faculty Supervisor

• At the beginning
• Discuss responsibilities and expectations
• Share your class schedule and other commitments
• Communicate regularly
• Unsure of something? Ask
• Report and document disruptive, threatening, and
  disrespectful student behavior

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Tips for Establishing Maintaining Relationship
with Faculty Supervisor

• Be a liaison between your students and your
  Faculty Supervisor
• Toward the Faculty Supervisor
• Share student criticisms
• Toward the Students
• Offer students rationales
• Offer students constructive suggestions
• Support a positive course environment
• Refrain from joining in criticisms

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Before We Conclude

• Complete Post-Survey items 4-6 on lime green
  survey form