Teaching Assistant (TA) workshops

At the beginning of every semester, the Department of Economics offers workshops for Teaching Assistants (TAs) and graduate students who plan to TA on best practices in grading writing assignments, standardizing marking based on rubrics and benchmarks, and providing students with feedback on their communication skills.

If you are planning to teach a course with some writing assignments, even if the assignments are low stakes, please make sure your TAs are aware of and will attend these workshops. They will receive hands-on training on how to mark writing assignments/assessments, and how to provide feedback on written assignments. 

The training will be delivered over three 1.5 hour sessions. All TAs and graduate students are invited to attend. Participants will receive a certificate upon completion which they can use on their resumes when applying for TA positions in the future.  

Workshop schedule: 

Date: Friday September 13th

• 10 am to 11:30 am
• 11:45 am to 1:15 pm 
• 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm

Location: In-person, Room to be confirmed

The workshops cover topics around:

1.  Effective ways to provide feedback 
2.  Key areas to focus on when grading your students' writing
3.  University resources to help students improve their writing skills 
4.  Hands-on standardization of marking writing samples

Preview of Agenda:

Session 1: 

• How writing assessment has shifted over time and what matters most in the current literature;
• What to focus on in writing assessment and feedback;
• Efficient and effective feedbacking: Triple entry feedback; how and why it works, with examples;
• Rubric and criteria for assessment with examples.

Session 2:

• Working in groups of three to assess a few samples of student writing (short writing tasks: Op-Ed, reading responses, visual data analysis)
• Working in groups of three to provide feedback on the samples.

Session 3:

• Working in groups of three to assess a few samples of student writing (essays);
• Working in groups of three to provide feedback on the samples (essays)

Please fill out the registration form below