Welcome and Congrats!
Congratulations on your role as a teaching associate at IU Indianapolis, whether this is your first semester or one of many. The teaching roles that graduate students take on vary from department to department, and the way that each person fills his or her teaching role is also different. Regardless, however, teaching associates are vital to the teaching mission of the university--they help faculty to complete their day-to-day course duties (e.g., managing in-class activities, monitoring the course website, grading exams, etc.) and oftentimes even teach their own classes and labs. Whatever your role is, remember that your work will impact student learning at IU Indianapolis in some particular and notable way.
Being a teaching associate is also a learning opportunity for you. Traditionally, and especially for those aspiring to become faculty, a teaching assistantship is part of one's graduate school training. Yet your work as a teaching associate can benefit you whether you are interested in an academic career or one outside the walls of the academy. Teaching helps you hone your leadership and organizational abilities while gaining an understanding of how people learn. This last point is critical and helps you to develop and improve communication skills that you can take into any professional position.
We hope that you will enjoy being a teaching associate at IU Indianapolis and that you will make the most of the opportunity. A number of offices and individuals are ready to help you succeed. Besides ETTA and any departmental support you may have, the Center for Teaching and Learning (which sponsors ETTA) offers a number of services that may be helpful to you as you work and grow in your role as a teaching associate. In addition, the IU Indianapolis Graduate Office can support you in your dual role as both a student and a teacher.
Where to Begin?
Because of variations between departments, roles, and individual teaching associates, no one answer to this question exists. However, the links below contains entry-level information that will help you to start thinking about your role as a teaching associate at IU Indianapolis. We have adapted the material in these links from the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning:
- Your Role as a Teaching Associate
- Before the Course Begins
- Office Hours, Tutoring, and Review Sessions
As you think about your work as a teaching associate, remember that it will likely require teaching in a way that helps students learn, supporting the teaching of others, or grading student work, all of which are serious responsibilities. What you do at IU Indianapolis will also involve teaching with different technologies, whether that means using Oncourse or Canvas to deliver content and collect student work, designing and delivering slideshow presentations in class, or using Adobe Connect or one of the many other communication and collaboration tools available to you at IU Indianapolis. Additionally, you will be working with students from many different backgrounds and with many different needs, something that will influence how you can best work with and serve them. Finally, and as with any experience, you will need to know who you can talk with for information and assistance. On this last note, do not hesitate to contact the ETTA team if you have questions as you begin or continue your work as a teaching associate at IU Indianapolis.