Pillars of Teaching Assistantship

Workshop 1: Fostering Belonging and Community in the Classroom

Being part of an academic community is a hallmark of the UCSB educational experience. This workshop introduces TAs to the values, perspectives, and strategies we use at UCSB to foster a sense of belonging and community in our classes.

Attendees will:

1. Use diversity statistics and other information about UCSB’s student population to reflect on approaches to learning and definitions of inclusive teaching.
2. Reflect on the implications of their own life experience and biases about teaching and learning as related to their role as a TA.
3. Explore a variety of inclusive teaching, communication, and classroom management strategies that help students feel a sense of belonging and safety. 
4. Examine common learning situations that TAs encounter, and determine how to address them in appropriate ways.

Workshop 2A: Active Learning: What, Why, How?

Students learn better when they are actively participating in the learning process rather than passively listening. In this workshop, you will differentiate between active learning and passive listening, identify elements that foster active learning, and apply a variety of instructional methods.

Attendees will:

1. Explain the difference between active learning and passive listening, in terms of students’ cognitive processes and learning gains.
2. Deconstruct simple active learning strategies to identify instructional elements that should be planned, such as giving directions, timing, small group management, furniture, etc.
3. Identify the basic elements of establishing a class atmosphere that supports active learning.

Workshop 2B: Developing Engaging Sections

Creating lessons is essential, but how can we ensure those lessons are engaging for our students? In this workshop, you will use learning objective taxonomies and a lesson planning framework to design active, student-centered classes.

Attendees will:

1. Compose learning objectives for a discussion section or lab.
2. Describe learning activities that engage students during section
3. Plan meaningful activities for section, as well as pre-/post- section activities.

Workshop 3A: Effective questioning and classroom assessment techniques

Much of a TA’s role during section is to formulate generative questions, structure activities that check student understanding, and give effective feedback. In this workshop, you will explore several classroom-based assessment and questioning techniques that are based on the principles of giving effective feedback.

Attendees will:

1. Explain the fundamentals of designing activities that scaffold learning in sections.
2. Describe the difference between feedback and feed-forward in summative and formative assessments.
3. Experience and plan to implement a variety of questioning techniques and no/low-stakes classroom assessment techniques.

Workshop 3B: Designing and Grading Assessments

TAs are responsible for creating, implementing, and evaluating assessments. But what makes a good assessment? How can we use assessment to support learning? And what are some reasonable ways to grade student work? In this workshop, you will use principles from evidence-based design to make assessments more focused and impactful, and help you with practical grading strategies.

Attendees will:

Explore a variety of ways to grade student work efficiently based on its role as a summative or formative assessment.

1. Consider how students use feedback and feed-forward in their studies to inform the TA’s use of grading/feedback strategies.
2. Practice designing questions and tasks for assessment.
3. Recognize what information about student learning is provided by an assessment.

Workshop 4: Improving Teaching Through Feedback and Reflection

Good teachers never stop learning how to improve their classes. This workshop helps TAs develop a sustainable plan for continuous improvement and professional development as teachers.

Attendees will:

1. Explore approaches to professional growth as a teacher that see it as a long-term process of continual experimentation, humility, and improvement through regular and purposeful reflection.
2. Plan to implement a method for obtaining real-time feedback from students about your teaching during the quarter.