Archives: TA News

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

Celebrating Carleton’s outstanding TAs

Congratulations to the 195 teaching assistants who were nominated for the EDC’s Outstanding TA Awards and many departmental TA awards. We received more than 400 nominations for almost 200 unique nominees this year, highlighting the amazing accomplishments of Carleton’s TAs. The awards celebrate the teaching assistants’ dedication to... 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

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

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Blog: Implementing Critical Pedagogy through Aesthetic Praxis

By: Sasha Hanson Pastran Traditional, explanative teaching models are often criticized for suppressing learners’ natural intellectual curiosity and their potential for co-creating knowledge (Lewis, 2012, p.28). This article will examine the challenges and possibilities of implementing a critical pedagogy that breaks away from the traditional... More

Friday, February 5, 2016

EDC wraps up another successful TA Training Day!

The EDC’s Winter 2016 TA Training Day event on January 23 saw more than 300 TAs take part in 10 unique training sessions aimed at their personal and professional development. We were especially privileged to hear keynote addresses from award-winning faculty members Peggy Hartwick (School Linguistics and Language Studies) and Maria DeRosa... More

Friday, February 5, 2016

Blog: Innovative Practices in the Classroom

By: Keltie Pratt As teaching assistants (TAs), we often have to adapt to new styles and methods of teaching. As we are not the primary instructor of the course, we often have little say in the development and methodology of the course(s) we are assigned. We are, however, an integral part of the education... More

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Blog: “Flip it, Flip it Good”: Benefits of Approaching the Classroom from a New Perspective

By: Mary Ritchie Since first being introduced in the early 2000s (e.g., Lage, Platt, & Treglia, 2000), the concept of the flipped classroom has taken on a variety of forms. While there has yet to be a single established definition or model (Tucker, 2012), the flipped classroom can be understood as a method of... More

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Blog: Focused Distraction: Utilising Smartphones to Promote Active Learning in the Classroom

By: Stephanie Biro While distractions within the classroom are not a new problem, the forms of distractions have significantly changed over recent years, shifting from doodling or daydreaming to text messaging or browsing the Internet. The use of smartphones has significantly increased over the last few years, with 86% of undergraduate students in... More

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Blog: The Innovation of Technology in the Classroom: Friend or Foe?

By: Lindsay Morgan Over the past few years, with the explosion of technology and social media, teaching has become somewhat of an arms race for students’ attention. Teaching style and information presented must now be more compelling than ever; that is, the person at the front of the room needs to be more captivating... More

Friday, January 29, 2016

Blog: Students Helping Students: The Writing Process and Identity Negotiation

By: Matthew Sanscartier As teaching assistants (TAs), we may think of ourselves as at the halfway point between student and instructor, often embodying both roles interchangeably. Simultaneously, we act as gatekeepers to knowledge and academic discourses, disciplining the way that our students read and write through the provision of grades and... More

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