Teaching Assistant Training: Information for Instructors and Coordinators

CTE offers support and resources to help your TAs, especially new TAs, prepare for their teaching duties. Below we have outlined the training and resources that CTE has available to set TAs up for success this Fall term.

TA Training

Preparing to TA at Waterloo: This foundational self-paced, asynchronous module is available for departments, Faculties, and course instructors to offer to their TAs (open to all TAs; both undergraduate and graduate students). Request Preparing to TA at Waterloo for your TAs.
Workshops by request: CTE staff can facilitate workshops as part of your departmental or Faculty TA Training, by request, in the modality of your choice. Contact Svitlana Taraban-Gordon for more information.
LEARN for TAs sessions: During the first month of term, CTE offers two sessions for TAs to introduce them to various LEARN tools. TAs can select their preferred date for this 2-hour session. Session dates will be listed on the CTE Events page.

Additional Resources

Fundamentals of University Teaching Program: Each term, CTE offers workshops on a variety of teaching topics relevant to TAs and graduate students. Upcoming offerings will be listed on the CTE Events page.
TA Handbook: a resource of practical tips for TAs to refer to throughout their time as a TA.
Faculty of Engineering TA Training: ExpecTAtions: The Faculty of Engineering requires all TAs to complete the ExpecTAtions workshop. This discipline-specific TA training program is separate from CTE’s TA Training and teaching programs, and is organized by Engineering. Please see the Faculty of Engineering ExpecTAtions webpage for further information.

Preparing to TA at Waterloo (CTE1210)

CTE offers a foundational, self-paced asynchronous module (approximately 2 hours) that Faculties, departments, or individual course instructors can ask their TAs to complete.

Any teaching assistant - graduate students or undergraduate students - can complete this module
By completing this module, graduate students can gain credit towards the Fundamentals of University Teaching certificate

This module can be used on its own or as a complement to department or Faculty-level TA training programs. If you are interested in offering the module to your TAs, please review and follow the instructions outlined in Process for requesting TA training below.

Module description: This module is designed to orient you to your role as a teaching assistant (TA), connect you with teaching-focused resources on our campus, and prepare you for a successful start as a TA. The module will address topics relevant to all TAs at Waterloo, including an introduction to teaching and learning at the University of Waterloo, instructional roles performed by TAs in different course modalities, tips for success and useful resources available for developing your skills. We’ll also help you understand how university policies related to teaching can provide guidance in some situations you may face as a TA, and introduce considerations for professionalism, academic integrity, student privacy, and copyright of teaching and learning materials.

CTE suggestions for using the online modules in your TA training

We designed this self-paced online module as a flexible supplement to discipline-specific TA training, that can be easily incorporated into your departmental/Faculty TA training. You might consider asking your TAs to complete the module throughout the term or at the beginning of the term. TAs will retain access to the module as a resource they can refer back to throughout the term.

Although TAs benefit from going through the standalone module, we encourage you to supplement this module with department- or Faculty-specific sessions. Supplemental activities can allow TAs the opportunity to engage in discussion with their peers, ask questions about being a TA in your department, and learn skills specific to the departmental teaching context. You might use the reflection questions and activities embedded in the module as discussion prompts, or you can design your own discussion prompts based on your disciplinary needs.

Process for instructors/departments/Faculties to request Preparing to TA at Waterloo module

We realize that TA training occurs at different levels across campus, whether it is at the Faculty, department, or course level.

If you are a course instructor interested in providing training to your TAs, we encourage you to talk to other instructors or the Graduate Coordinator in your department to determine whether this training should be offered to all TAs in your department. If your department is not interested in offering this training, you can then request training for TAs in your course.

We ask that you do the following to arrange access to the Preparing to TA at Waterloo LEARN site for your TAs:

Request through the Preparing to TA at Waterloo request survey (in Qualtrics).
Once we receive your survey responses above, someone from CTE will contact you with further information regarding the logistics of TA registration and access to the module.

Workshops by Request

CTE can facilitate workshops as part of your departmental or Faculty TA Training by request, in the modality of your choice (in-person or online synchronous).

To get a sense of the topics we can offer workshops on, please see the list of CTE’s core workshop offerings.
If you are interested in CTE staff facilitating a workshop as part of your TA training, please contact Svitlana Taraban-Gordon from CTE.

LEARN for TAs Sessions

This two-hour hands-on workshop will introduce TAs to LEARN (from Desire2Learn), our learning management system for presenting course activities and resources in on-campus and fully online courses. By the end of this session, TAs will: be able to use the D2L environment to communicate with students; have basic knowledge of the tools available within D2L (e.g., enter grades). For more information see the LEARN for TAs webpage. Session dates will be listed on the CTE Events page.

Workshops in the Fundamentals of University Teaching Program

Each term, CTE offers workshops on a variety of teaching topics relevant to TAs and graduate students as part of the Fundamentals of University Teaching Program. These workshops are open to all graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

Key topics include: designing lesson plans; teaching methods; effective questions; receiving and giving feedback; building rapport with students and course instructors; reflecting on diversity in the classroom, teaching STEM tutorials and facilitating discussions.

TAs can register and complete individual workshops or accumulate workshops towards the Fundamentals of University Teaching certificate which requires completing 6 workshops and 3 microteaching (practice teaching) sessions.

Upcoming offerings will be listed on the CTE Events page.

TA Handbook

We encourage you to share the TA Handbook with TAs in your department. This resource has been updated for the 2023-2024 academic year and provides key resources to help TAs prepare for and carry out their role successfully at Waterloo.