We thought you might want to know some of the details about the role of the Graduate Teaching Assistant. They can be very helpful. Please get to know your TAs.
What is a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA)?
- A GTA is a graduate student who is paid to help an instructor with a class.
- A GTA’s main duties are to meet with students and to grade assignments.
- A GTA has office hours when she is available to meet with you.
- A GTA is a resource person for both the instructor and the class.
What can a GTA do for you?
- For some of you, this is your first year at the University of BC. You may have general questions about how things work here. The GTA may be able to answer some of your general questions about UBC and the Faculty of Forestry, or guide you to someone who can.
- The GTA can help you refine your ideas and topics for assignments and term papers. Once you decide on a topic, s/he can help you think about how to make the topic relevant to the assignment and to the course, and help you determine the scope of your paper.
- If you’re having difficulties – with writing or with any number of things related to the course – the GTA can either help you directly or suggest other sources of help. There are a number of useful services available on campus.
- The GTA can discuss and help explain class concepts, or perhaps give a different perspective on a topic.
- Also, the GTA can provide feedback. Feedback – usually in the form of comments the instructor or the GTA writes on your assignments, or a meeting where you can discuss your assignment – is meant to give you an idea of what you did well and how you might improve your next assignment.
What a GTA cannot do for you:
- Your assignments – that’s your job. However, s/he can help you to understand what is required of you for the assignment and help you organize your thinking about it.
- While the GTA can help you to refine topics for assignments and papers s/he cannot supply you with topics for term papers – that’s your job too. Coming up with an appropriate term paper topic is part of the assignment (and sometimes the most difficult part of writing a paper!). So, if you want to discuss topics, do some work beforehand (i.e., prepare a list of topics you can discuss with the teaching assistant).
- Edit drafts of assignments or papers before you hand them in. This would be fair only if we could offer this service to everyone in the class and that would require too much time. However, we highly recommend that you leave enough time before an assignment is due to ask others (in the class, friends, in your family) to read over and edit what you have written and tell you honestly what they liked about your writing and what wasn’t clear. It’s scary, but it can often improve your writing (and sometimes your grade…).
- Counsel you on (or solve) personal problems. However, depending on the problem, a GTA can probably direct you to somewhere on campus where you can get help. Of course, you can also ask the instructor about where you can get appropriate help.
What the GTA looks for when marking
In addition to the specific requirements of each short essay, book review, and term paper, here are some general things she keeps an eye out for when marking:
- Critical thinking – this falls into two general categories:
a) How you interpret and use information. There is tremendous amount of information available on almost any topic, but not all of it is of the same quality. Thinking critically about this information means that you are considering where the information came from, what biases the author might have, what other points of view might exist, and how well the author constructed his/her argument.
b) How you construct your essay and argue your case. We look for an initial statement (one sentence, or perhaps a short paragraph, stating what you will be writing about), and a logical series of paragraphs or statements that lead up to your final conclusion. For more on constructing essays, please read the following article:
Lertzman, K.P. 1995. Notes on writing papers and theses. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 76: 86 – 90. A copy of this article will be handed out in class.
- Improvement – we like to see evidence that you are using the feedback you get to improve your writing and the clarity of your thinking – after all, that’s one of the purposes of this course.
- Plagiarism – this is when you take someone else’s work or ideas and lead others to believe that these things are your own. This can be done on purpose or by accident (i.e. forgetting to provide a reference for an idea or a quote you borrowed from someone). Either way, plagiarism is serious, but with a little care and effort, it can be avoided. Everyone should be familiar with UBC’s policy on it: http://www.arts1.arts.ubc.ca/arts-one-program/ubc-plagiarism-policy.html.
