Archives: TA Blog

Friday, February 10, 2017

Blog: Learning at Play: Integrating Live Action Role-Playing into the Classroom

By: Noah Schwartz Children learn through play. As we grow into adulthood and are socialized through the school system, however, play becomes a smaller and smaller part of our educational training regime. In recent years, scholarship has continued to demonstrate that traditional styles of teaching, which emphasize lecturing and see students as... More

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Blog: The Choice is Theirs: Offering Students Choice as an Inclusive Teaching Practice

By: Jeff Carette Inclusive education refers to a method of teaching that advocates equal opportunity learning for all students, regardless of background or learning disabilities. Through the application of inclusive practices, we can avoid the kind of “ability labeling” that has been shown to stifle a learner’s capacity to achieve... More

Friday, December 23, 2016

Winter 2017 TA Training Offerings

The EDC's TA Training offerings for the Winter 2017 term are now fully viewable and open for registration! Our new Events page provides a complete overview of all our workshops and sessions, but you can view the list of regular workshops here (all in 422 DT) and the full program for our TA Training Day... More

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Blog: Reassessing Assessment

By: Melissa Pullara After years of being students ourselves, many Teaching Assistants (TAs) have likely become well-acquainted with the fact that not all students learn the same way. Many of us, too, have likely been subject to various forms of categorization: my grade ten Careers class, for instance, required us to take an aptitude... More

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Blog: Metacognition in the Classroom: Engaging the Mind, Engaging the Student

By: Naba Ahsan It’s common to see instructors at the front of the lecture hall, repeatedly asking students to limit laptop usage to note taking (instead of Facebook) or disallowing cell phone usage—I’ve even come across a syllabus or two explicitly asking students to reserve sleeping for outside the classroom. Apparently, the word... More

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Blog: Teaching Narratives of the Sea in the Classroom: Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy and the Shipwreck

By: Michelle K. Barron Preparing lessons on shipwreck excavations and underwater cultural heritage discoveries can be a daunting task, primarily because of the numerous intersections of disciplines. Each area of study—be it maritime archaeology, oceanic anthropology, diasporic and migration literature, international law of the sea, or heritage... More

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Blog: Learning to Read Before You Can Discuss: Critical Reading in First-Year and Peer-Led Tutorials

By: Victoria Bisnauth Critical reading and thinking are skills that students applying to university, especially to programs in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and public affairs, are often told they will develop over the course of their post-secondary education and that are easily transferable and highly regarded in the job market. While... More

Monday, March 21, 2016

Blog: Using Google Hangout and Skype to Promote Online Learning

By: Robyn Pepin More and more students are obtaining post-secondary education using different online platforms (Harish, 2013). In addition to Moodle and Big Blue Button platforms already used on some university campuses, learning can also be facilitated by instructors and teaching assistants through platforms such as Google Hangout and Skype.... More

Monday, March 21, 2016

Blog: Improving Oral Communication

By: Claire Reynolds Oral communication is an essential part of our daily lives. It is a skill many university programs draw attention to and assess because it is an integral part of the workplace and interview process. For example, George Evans, the former chief financial officer of R&P Coal, asks interviewees about the English... More

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Blog: Engaging Students through Daily Progress Tracking

By: Tamer Beitelmal While it advances quickly, technologies can and should be used by educators to improve the learning process, especially as new generations of students are using internet, social-media, computers, and smartphones in their daily lives. In this article, I explain how the practice of daily progress tracking can be a powerful tool... More

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Blog: Online Discussion Boards: The Case for Their Integration into Science Courses as a Review Tool

By: Marissa Davies Science courses, especially at the introductory level, cover a wide variety of topics within a term and have students enrolled from different majors. To help students consolidate the information they have learned and guide their studying so they do not feel overwhelmed, classroom-based review sessions before exams are typically... More

Friday, February 26, 2016

Blog: Peer Teaching as an Innovative Tool to Foster Student Learning and Engagement

By: Amy Silver Despite being a straight A student, my understanding of calculus did not reach a deeper level until I became a peer mentor for first-year science students – despite the fact that calculus was a course I had received an A+ in with relative ease the year before. By explaining the concepts... More

Load More →