SAS Teaching Assistants (TAs): General comments
You will receive roughly one TA for every 35 students in your class.
A single TA unit is 80 hours, which is an average workload of 5 hours of work per week for the term (16 weeks). TAs are also members of the Math Faculty proctoring pool and may be selected to proctor for other courses. Therefore, you should not assign more than 76.5 hours per TA.
Duties could include holding office hours, running tutorials, proctoring, and marking assessments (e.g. assignments, quizzes, tests, midterms, final exams, reports, etc.). TAs are expected to be available (in-person if needed) for their duties until the last day of the exam period. For instance, living too far away or going on vacation are not valid reasons for missing TA duties.
TAs are graduate students whose first priority is their graduate work. They are often enrolled in their own courses with lectures, tests and assignment deadlines. They may have other commitments outside of school. Be understanding and communicate reasonable deadlines.
Before the Term
- You (or the course coordinator, if applicable) should complete the following forms to assist with TA Assignments:
- TA duty preferences form: Indicate the types of TA duties involved in your course so that TAs can appropriately select courses.
- TA ranking form: Rank the candidates who have expressed interest in being assigned to your course, but note these rankings are not guarantees.
- Consider the needs for your course and plan TA duties.
Start of Term
- Once you obtain your list of TAs, arrange a meeting with them before the end of the first week of the term. Get to know your TAs by name and indicate the importance of their role in running a successful course.
- Provide a schedule (in writing) that indicates approximately how the 76.5 hours of work will be spread over the term. Discuss the schedule with your TAs and, when possible, consider their preferences when allocating hours to each task. You can share a TA Information and Calendar document with your TA team.
- Complete a TA Agreement for each of your TAs using the PDF form or online system.
- TA office hours should be booked in the Tutorial Centre (M3 2101) using the Tutorial Center request form or by contacting SAS ISCs. TAs should not hold office hours in their own offices since those are shared with other grad students.
Throughout the Term
- Send reminders about meetings, proctoring or marking close to the date of the event.
- Provide TAs with a schedule of lecture topics and copies of assignments in advance so they can answer student questions effectively.
- Communicate expectations about deadlines and responsibilities. Providing instructions in writing may lead to fewer misunderstandings.
- As the term progresses, some TAs may end up with more/less hours than expected. Check in with TAs periodically to make sure hours are allocated fairly and to re-allocate tasks if needed. A few examples: trading off which TAs get the “easy” or “hard” questions for marking; checking whether TAs are answering Piazza questions; checking how much time TAs spend in office hours and how many students attend.
- Set consistent and reasonable deadlines for marking. Encourage TAs to communicate any problems with the marking scheme to you as soon as possible so that clarifications can be passed on to the rest of the team. In particular, encourage TAs to ask how to mark student solutions which differ from those provided by the instructor. You can view an example marking guideline.
- Check in with TAs periodically to see how things are going, especially those who might not feel comfortable coming forward. Offering constructive feedback can help TAs improve and feel that their work matters.
- If you would like advice for coordinating, managing, and evaluating your TAs, please connect with SAS ISCs or the SAS TA Program for support.
- If you experience any issues with your TAs, please talk to the Associate Chair of Graduate Affairs and SAS Graduate Studies Manager.