What are the ISG-supported courses?
ISG supports faculty and sessional instructors assigned to teach the courses listed below.
If you are assigned to a course that is not listed here, please refer to Guidelines for CS instructors or the CS faculty webpage for more general expectations, guidelines, and tips for faculty/instructors.
Instructional Support Coordinators
An Instructional Support Coordinator (ISC) is full-time member of the Instructional Support Group and will be your main point of contact for the term. They support courses for multiple terms to provide continuity and consistency for each course offering. Their duties include:
- assisting instructors to coordinate the administrative aspect of the course,
- managing course personnel including Instructional Support Assistants (ISAs), Instructional Apprentices (IAs), and Teaching Assistants (TAs), and
- teaching CS courses (all ISCs have academic credentials or a teaching background).
What ISCs will help you with
ISCs will usually reach out to you (and the other instructors) before the term begins to communicate mutual expectations, and the current practices of the course if you are new to teaching it. You can determine who your ISC is on our ISC/Course allocation page.
We expect that our instructors dedicate their time and efforts to the teaching and evaluation aspects of course delivery. As a result, ISCs will take on some of the more trivial tasks to spare you the trouble.
If you are unsure of how to approach any of the following, chances are that it is already being taken care of by the ISC, or they will be able to provide advice for navigating the following.
- Course materials management (e.g. LEARN setup, assisting with course note/textbook requisition)
- Coordinating course operations (e.g. supervision of course ISAs/IAs/TAs, schedules, exam organization)
- Liaising with CSCF for computing resources and software application support (e.g. assignment submission programs)
- Special cases/considerations for students (e.g. dealing with cheating cases, dealing with INC requests, accommodations for illness)
- Grade management, revisions, and archiving
Other course personnel
In addition to the course ISC and instructors, you will have other course personnel supporting the course, and will usually convene with them during course meetings. Most 100/200-level courses supported by ISG have a combination of ISAs, IAs, and TAs. You can read more about their individual roles on our site, but below are some key points to note.
ISAs are full-time co-op students, and the only full-time staff dedicated entirely to the course. ISAs contribute to both the frontline (e.g. office hours, conducting tutorials, supervising labs) and backend aspects of the course.
IAs are graduate students hired part-time to conduct tutorials, supervise labs or hold consulting hours. If a course does not have an ISA, then the IAs will take on some of the backend responsibilities.
TAs are also graduate students but are basically part-time markers and exam proctors.