If you’re interested in contributing to our TA blog, please email: TASupport@cunet.carleton.ca

Monday, September 26, 2022

TA Blog: Oops! Five Things We Learned as Online Teaching Assistants

By Ekpedeme Edem, PhD Candidate, Law and Legal Studies, Former TA Mentor and Helen Roumeliotis, PhD Candidate, Cultural Mediations, Former TA Mentor The COVID-19 pandemic has modified almost every facet of life, including pedagogy, which remains a key area of focus for post-secondary education. Educators all around the world “...have, almost... More

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

TA Blog: Inclusive Online Learning

By Romeo Penheiro, Teaching Assistant, Department of Cognitive Science The scholarship of teaching and learning requires a good understanding of inclusive online learning practices to accommodate students from marginalized backgrounds. Instructors and teaching assistants can improve their teaching skills and practices by creating equal opportunity... More

Thursday, March 10, 2022

TA Blog: Fostering Trust and Community in Online Learning Spaces

By Rebecca Korn, Teaching Assistant for the School for Studies in Art and Culture My very first teaching assistant position took place during lockdowns, social isolation and online learning. When I began brainstorming activities for online tutorials, the very concept of fostering communication within online learning spaces seemed daunting.... More

Thursday, March 10, 2022

TA Blog: Pandemic Persistence, Online Learning and Social Isolation: The Importance of Connecting Students to Extracurricular Activities

By Andrew Crosby, Teaching Assistant for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology The COVID-19 pandemic is painstakingly persistent and has created cycles of disruption for in-person learning on Ontario’s university campuses (and beyond). Now in the fourth wave with a prolific omicron variant, the prior confidence levels of university... More

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Virtual University: A Chance to Level the Participation Field

By: Rezda Rezal, B.A. Honours Law (concentration in Business Law and minor in Business), Faculty of Public Affairs The onset of the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented shift for Canadian universities to move their courses online. Throughout the year, it has been observed that this virtual learning environment has impacted... More

Thursday, June 17, 2021

Discord and Google and Slack – Oh my! How Multiple Online Platforms are Contributing to Student Burnout and What Teaching Assistants Can Do to Help

By: Sarah Enouy, Master's Student (Mental Health & Addictions Lab; Dept. of Psychology)   After the switch to online learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers were quick to name, and study, the phenomenon of “Zoom fatigue” (e.g., Fosslien et al.,; Wiederhold, 2020). However, while it is clear that video meetings lead to... More

Friday, June 11, 2021

More Than A Student Number: How Caring and Thoughtful Pedagogies Foster a Sense of Belonging in Online Higher Education during Times of Crisis

By: Parker Nicholls, Master’s Student (Music & Culture)  Students and teachers in higher education have been required to transition from face-to-face learning to online learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic and active quarantine measures. With little time to prepare and properly transition their pedagogies and learning outcomes to the... More

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

On Student Success: Making Opportunities to Teach into Opportunities to Dismantle Your Biases

By: Lindsay Dorder, Master's student (Health Sciences) Introduction: “Knowing thyself” Students are all uniquely receiving and interpreting information (1,2). A word or phrase could ultimately have different meaning and emotional attachments for a student (1,2). Therefore, it is of utmost importance that those delivering some form of a lesson... More

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Creating Accessible Laboratory Spaces for Students with Physical Disabilities

By: Eliza Ali, PhD Student (Neuroscience) Science education is becoming more inclusive, however there is still much work that needs to be done when considering students with physical disabilities. The under representation of students with physical disabilities is a systemic issue that starts before enrolling in college or university. In secondary... More

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Utilizing Technologies to Improve Accessibility in the Classroom

By Abdihakim Mao, Masters student (Information Technology) Nowadays, it goes without saying that technology plays an integral part in the everyday lives of students, teaching assistants, and instructors. According to a recent statistic published by EduCause, at least 91% of students own a laptop and a smartphone [1]. Technologies such as... More

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Addressing Traumatic Brain Injury in the Classroom: A Teaching Assistant’s Perspective

By Adam Stone, Phd Student (SLaLS) While Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) can be a source of significant impairment toward learning in the classroom, there are several measures put in place at Carleton University that help accommodate those who face obstacles to their academic success. In practice however, there are several challenges to effectively... More

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Improving Educational Accessibility Using the Universal Design for Learning

By: Nathan Murtha, Phd Student (Physics) Although it is my job to teach as a teaching assistant in the physics department at Carleton University, I have learned a great deal from the time that I’ve spent in front of a classroom and with students. I have had students who excel by working through the... More

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Experiential Learning in the Classroom

By: Edna Tehranzadeh, Health: Science, Technology and Policy, Faculty of Science   Traditionally, learning in the classroom has taken a passive approach. If one were to picture a classroom setting, an image of an instructor standing at the front of the room would come to mind. The professor delivers the course content while students... More

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

The Case for a Universal Design for Learning at Carleton University

By: Margaret Janse Van Rensburg, School of Social Work   The Canadian Human Rights Act (R.S.C. 1985) legislates that all people should have equitable opportunities regardless of ability. It institutes that plans should be made to adapt services, facilities, premises, equipment or operations to meet the needs of persons arising from a... More

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Blog: Get Ahead of the Game – Effective Implementation of Game-Based Learning to Boost Motivation in the French Department’s Support Services

By: Nicolas Corbeil, Department of French As a TA in the French department's support services, my colleagues and I have a unique role in students' language learning. We offer written and oral support to students that comprises part of their grades. We have the opportunity to interact with students in a classroom setting only... More

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Blog: Perspectives on Student Success – At the Student, Along the Path, At the Educator

By: Sarah Walton, Department of Biology Educators must work with their students to highlight how they will motivate and engage each other to achieve academic success. Students want to apply expertise to a career of choice, whereas educators must promote a socially and intellectually stimulating environment so their students can apply and connect... More

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Blog: TAs and Student Motivation & Engagement

By: Emma McLarens, Institute of Cognitive Science In a time when five years of secondary education (Grade 13) no longer exists and it seems like an undergraduate degree is the minimum education requirement to apply for any job, adolescents are entering university without always knowing what they want or are interested in studying. This... More

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Blog: Engaging Students Through Group Work — Making the Boring Stuff, Not so Boring

By: Jesse Lewis, Norman Paterson School of Public Policy and Administration By the time they reach university, students have long since identified their interests and how to integrate those interests into their work. When given the option of choosing a topic for an academic paper, or a research assignment, or a thesis, students understand... More

Friday, February 2, 2018

Blog: Facilitating Intrinsic Motivation for Disengaged Students — Knowing Our Audience and Challenging Our Students

By: Michelle MacQueen, Department of Music There are strong links between motivation, autonomy, and competence (Ryan & Deci 2000a, 2000b). However, a motivated, autonomous, and competent learning experience cannot occur if students do not feel engaged in the learning materials. Motivation for students can be divided into two categories: (1)... More

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Blog: Supporting Students with ADHD and Performance Anxiety

By: Lucas Jerusalimiec As teaching assistants (TAs), many of us have experience in assisting students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). These students are often highly engaged in tutorials and demonstrate intelligence during class discussions. Those who are in the upper years of their undergraduate degrees are most likely aware... More

Monday, March 6, 2017

Blog: “Hey, you guys!”: Avoiding non-inclusive, gendered language in the classroom

By: Anita Grace As I wrapped up a TA workshop on participatory classroom activities, I was feeling positive about the energy in the classroom and the engagement from all the participants. Everything seemed to have gone so well. But when I reviewed the index cards that I had used to gather feedback, two responses... More

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

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

Monday, February 1, 2016

Blog: Flipped Learning: Utilising Flipped Assessment as a Teaching Assistant

By: Becky Grace The inverted classroom model has become one of the most commonly discussed teaching methods in higher education. The inverted, or flipped, classroom can be defined as a pedagogical model that reverses the internal and the external structure of the classroom (Bart, 2014). More specifically, the flipped classroom reverses the... More

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