The Center for Geospatial Analysis (CGA) is recruiting teaching assistants for the upcoming semester. The TA position is offered as 1 credit course (GIS 425). All TA applicants should put GIS 425 as a 1 credit course into their registration cart. Instructor permission will be offered to those TA's selected.
To be considered, you must have earned at least an A- in the course you plan to be a TA for, and be available to work 4–6 hours each week of the semester. During these hours you will meet with the TA team and lab instructors, review upcoming assignments, and hold office hours in the CGA to assist hands-on with lab exercises and final projects. An example break-down of your time is provided below.
45 min to 1 hour: Weekly meeting with course instructors and other TAs to provide feedback and discuss the current week, future week’s plans, and learning objectives. This is also when we discuss issues that arise and best practices in teaching/mentoring for handling those issues. (For upper level courses, this will likely be a 1:1 meeting with the TA & Instructor at an arranged time)
4-6 hours: Hold at least one session of office hours per week in the CGA classroom and/or office lab to answer questions, provide technical assistance and troubleshoot issues that arise. Most often TA's break this up into 2 hour time frames twice a week. Hours assignments are determined in the first week of the semester during the first TA meeting.
Additionally, we ask each GIS 201 TA to work to take the lead regarding a module of the course and focus on the lab review to critique and suggest changes to the faculty, comment and/or create content as needed. This may involve directly collaborating with a faculty member or may be independent.
Each GIS 201 TA will report and lead the TA discussion about their assigned module during a TA meeting. This will include changes to the lab and also of potential areas of student confusion within their module. This varies in the amount of time it takes to review and prepare but is typically only one module in the semester.
TAs are evaluated based on:
- Weekly attendance with course instructors/TA meeting
- Participation and student engagment in assigned office hours in the CGA
- Review of their module (feedback to faculty, leading the TA meeting and discussion).
- Level of feedback provided to students and instructors on labs, assignments, etc.
Questions? Please email us at cga@wm.edu with questions.
