Campus-wide Orientation for New TAs (Summer 2004)

As the first introduction to being a teaching assistant at UCSB the TA Orientation was successful in giving new TAs some of the information they need to be effective in the classroom during their first TA experience. By far the most useful section of the general session was the experienced TA panel discussion. The group of TAs was very open with the group about what the real challenges are that we as TAs will face, both in the classroom and dealing with the administrative side of it all. Probably the most important message from the group was to stay flexible and be willing to change things up when your methods are not effective for that group of students. The first workshop I attended dealt with "How Students Learn." The majority of the time was spent talking about how we learn as students and what impacts that might have on how we then teach. This is important in that not all students learn in the same manner and that if we only teach in the way that we learn ourselves, we will not reach a large proportion of our students. The second workshop I attended discussed "Presenting Information for Maximum Learning and Retention." This workshop used a role-playing skit and the subsequent discussion to point out some of the common pitfalls in checking for understanding and retention while teaching and how to correct them. It focused on moving past the situation where as teachers we have to interpret whether blank stares are a product of boredom or true understanding of the material, by utilizing active checks on student learning and comprehension.