Checklist: Common Types of TA Responsibilities

Lead recitation sections

• review main points/difficult parts of lectures
• discuss examples in detail
• respond to questions about homework
• may create and give quizzes
• often grade, hold office hours and conduct review sessions
• attend TA/staff meetings to coordinate activities across sections

Lead discussion sections

• discuss key course concepts based on assigned reading, writing or in-class exercises
• guide students on writing assignments
• may create and give quizzes or homework
• typically grade and hold office hours
• attend TA/staff meetings to coordinate activities across sections

Assist in laboratories

• monitor ongoing student work in technical courses
• respond to questions about experiments, methods, equipment and software
• ensure student safety
• may give brief pre-lab lectures
• often grade lab reports

Assist in studios

• monitor ongoing student work in fine arts courses
• respond to questions about projects, exercises, techniques or software
• assist with desk critiques or other face-to-face feedback
• may create assignments

Grade

• follow criteria provided by the professor
• often create grading keys for homework
• may collaborate on creating grading criteria for exams, papers, computer programs and projects
• provide constructive comments on individual students' work
• prepare detailed solution sets for homework
• may assist students in office hours, review sessions or computer clusters

Supervise group projects

• meet with project groups in or out of class
• guide students' choices of approaches
• assist in providing feedback on intermediate stages of the project
• provide information on useful resources
• may be involved in grading final projects

Hold office hours

• be available regularly and by appointment to answer students' questions about course material
• contact students who are having significant difficulties to offer assistance
• may provide tutoring for students whose backgrounds are weak in key areas

Conduct review sessions

• summarize major concepts
• answer students' questions as regular review or prior to an exam
• may prepare a written review sheet for exams or present a summary of the most important points
• provide students with supervised practice answering exam-like questions