The University of British Columbia

A primary EOS-SEI objective is to enable, facilitate, and support faculty and teaching assistants (TAs) to follow best practices that foster optimal performance of all the undergraduate students we teach. Two aspects are:

1. Supporting TAs directly in the actual work they do

Most graduate students are acting in support roles for courses being run by faculty members. Typical roles include running labs, marking lab and other assignments, providing feedback on these and other examples of student work, holding office hours for 1-on-1 support of students, helping with active aspects within a class, and others. EOS-SEI is working on sustainable (i.e. after EOS-SEI) ways to help new (and not so new) graduate students carry out their jobs as effectively and efficiently as possible. Initiatives include

• Roughly monthly open lunch time gatherings where TAs can discuss specific aspects of the job, with input from STLFs. These are run with the help of the 2010-2011 graduate student council - Thanks everyone! Here are Followup documents from each meeting:
  • February 7, 2011; A first meeting to exchange ideas, questions, complaints, experiences and ideas about ways to make “the job” (in all it’s various forms) easier and more effective.
  • March 7, 2011; Training opportunities for TAs – pros, cons, needs, opportunities and recommendations
  • March 28, 2011; INSPIRE tutoring model, and how it can help TAs improve their work in a wide range of different settings.
  • April 18, 2011: Trouble shooting session, but principally "Motivating students who don’t seem interested".
• A paper (and online) guidelines document and/or FAQ is being considered for September 2011. Grad Council is the original initiator, but EOS-SEI is eager to help out with any initiative that could have lasting benefits for undergarduate education in our Department.
• There are also inital considerations under way concerning how to make a short workshop for new students. The aim would be to make this a regular feature of welcoming events in September.
• Other ideas are welcome - please contact Francis Jones.

2. A geoscience education course for graduate students and teaching assistants (TAs)

EOSC 516, Teaching and Learning in the Earth and Ocean Sciences, is now taken regularly by 10-20 graduate students each year. Training graduate students in best teaching practices will not only help our undergraduates and faculty, but will also improve the effectivness of teaching that graduate students do when they finish their degrees. Development work and teaching of this course has been lead by Brett Gilley, and the start-up of this course was support by UBC's Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth (now CTLT)). For more details, including people involved, see the TA training project outline page.