During the workshop, participants will be provided with an introduction to being a GA/TA. Various topics will be covered, including GA/TA responsibilities to anticipate and complete prior to starting your GA or TA appointment, conditions that must be met throughout your appointment, and suggestions for communicating with the course instructor and the students. 

This workshop will introduce and discuss the idea of academic integrity and associated regulations at the University of Windsor. Additionally, tips for preventing and detecting plagiarism will be discussed. 

In this workshop, I will examine our University Mission statement: Enabling people to make a better world through education, scholarship, research, and engagement and compare it with Marylin Cochrane-Smith's purpose of education as preparing students to engage in satisfying work, function as lifelong learners who can cope with the challenges of a rapidly changing global society, recognize inequities in their everyday contexts, and join with others to challenge them.  I will make the case that every graduate of the University of Windsor should be able to define race, racism, Anti-racism, Anti-Black/Anti-Indigenous/Asian etc. racism, within their own discipline and field of study and be committed to engaging in constructive and productive strategies for change – caring, supportive and restorative collaborative community-based/grassroots endeavours – to challenge all forms of oppression. 

Grading and providing effective feedback in response to student work is one of the most important GA/TA roles. While supervisors will provide different instructions for how they would like their GA/TA’s to complete these specific responsibilities, there are some common elements of these tasks that all GAs and TAs should have a basic understanding and consideration of. This session will explore subjects such as: What is an Assessment?; Why is it important?; Types of Assessments; Specific Elements of Grading Assessments (the how to dos of online grading and providing feedback); GA/TA’s Role in Assessments; Using Rubrics; Cheating in Student Submissions and What to do?; Effective Feedback – What is it? What does it look like?; Types of Feedback; How to give feedback.

This session will be most relevant to those who have been assigned as HyFlex TAs or are interested in becoming one. This session will describe what HyFlex means, as well as how HyFlex will work at University of Windsor this Winter. We will explore what's different about the HyFlex teaching environment, what your instructor might expect of you and how you can best support them. An overview of the equipment/technology used will be provided as well as a description of the additional supports that will be in place (e.g. extra IT support, HyFlex in-class TAs etc.). Finally, there a discussion about how to promote engagement in the HyFlex environment.

Do you need to record a lecture/webinar? Do you need to meet with students online (as a group or privately)? The virtual classroom (formally called Blackboard Collaborate Ultra) can handle this and more. Best of all, it is available in every Blackboard site or can be set up outside of Blackboard and is free for faculty, staff, GAs, TAs, and students to use.This workshop will attempt to demonstrate everything you need to know to use the virtual classroom.

In the workshop “Using Teams (to Add Value to Your GAship)” you will learn about the main features and functions of Teams – chat, virtual meetings and collaborating within Teams using posts, files and collaborating on documents, as well as an overview of Class Teams which are connected to a Blackboard course site. We will cover how to send a Teams meeting invite, how to modify Teams meeting settings to fit the purpose of your virtual sessions as well as introduce the Teams webinar function, allowing you to use Teams for professional looking presentations, webinars and virtual conferences.

This session will provide an overview of key Blackboard tools and topics for GAs and TAs in the online environment. Our focus will be on communicating with students (announcements, discussion board), and grading the different types of assessments found on Blackboard (tests, assignments, and discussion boards) in addition to using the Grade Centre and related features. For optimum experience, you should be using Google Chrome for this session.