8.3 TAs roles in your online course

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With well-planned roles, TAs can help make an online course much easier for you to teach and more impactful for your students’ learning. Adapting your course for the online environment may change the way your TAs do work in your course or it may change the work TAs do altogether.

Examples of how the ways your TAs do work might change:

  • Accessing submitted assignments through Canvas rather than collecting papers in-class.
  • Providing feedback electronically instead of using pen and paper.
  • Facilitating discussions in Collaborate Ultra break-out rooms rather than in tutorial classrooms.
  • Shifting office hours outside of the usual UBC workday to accommodate the needs of students in different time zones (if permitted by the TA contract).

Examples of how the work your TAs do might change:

  • Setting up and organizing Collaborate Ultra break-out rooms, moderating chat during synchronous class sessions, and prioritizing questions to be answered. 
  • Facilitating students’ asynchronous discussions through online forums. 
  • Setting up and Invigilating exams online.

In the next few sections you will explore four possible roles that TAs might play in your online course and how you can set your TAs up for success in those roles.

Keep in mind that the amount of time required to support online activities may be different from the time required for in-person activities, so you will need to carefully consider workload and available TA hours as you assign roles. Further, your TAs may be new to teaching and learning online and may need additional training. This training should be scheduled as time worked. Please be mindful of TA time and familiarize yourself with the collective agreements (CUPE 2278 for Vancouver campus and BCGEU Okanagan) which outline hours of work and conditions of employment for UBC TAs.

Role-specific considerations

The following sections provide guiding questions and considerations related to possible TA roles in online courses. We will explore four possible TA roles:

Role 1: Office Hours and Learning Resource Curation
Role 2: Marking and/or providing feedback
Role 3: Instructing/Demonstrating
Role 4: Course Support and General Considerations

For any of the roles TAs might play in your course, consider the following:

  • What is changing as you move your course online?
  • What expectations will you have for your TAs and how will you communicate those expectations?
  • What skills or training will your TAs require and what resources are available to support them? (Note that any required training must be included as (paid) work in your TAs’ overall hours.)
  • What necessary equipment, supplies, resources, and facilities (including encrypted computer hardware, internet connection, workspace at home, software, access permissions, etc.) will TAs need? For example, note section 20.01 of the CUPE 2278 Collective Agreement (Vancouver) which states:

The Employer shall ensure, consistent with the facilities available to departments, that employees shall be provided with an appropriate place for holding consultations with their students, which permits confidential discussion as required. The Employer shall provide the required equipment, supplies, academic text(s) and facilities (including computer and photocopier access) necessary in the judgement of the Employer for the performance of the employee's duties which have been assigned under the provisions of Article 13.05. Such facilities shall include access to an existing Employer telephone.