Teaching & Supporting Learning as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (5 ECTS) - 8th April 2024 - Registration now open

Teaching and Supporting Learning for Graduate Teaching Assistants (‘T&SL’) can form part of Trinity’s structured PhD programme and welcomes postgraduate research students with active roles in supporting teaching, learning, and assessment at Trinity. Grounded in the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL), T&SL enables participants to engage critically and integrate research-derived insights into their own practice in the lecture hall, laboratory, or seminar room. Participants are supported to come together in a Community of Practice to develop their expertise in teaching, learning and assessment, using theory and reflection to articulate their own philosophy of teaching.

Module participants are enabled to develop a conceptual understanding of the norms and expectations of being a TA; to examine your assumptions, values, beliefs around teaching and supporting learning, to employ effective teaching and assessment strategies that promote learning, and to reflect on and evaluate their own approach to teaching.  The standalone module welcomes PGRs with limited experience of teaching/supporting learning and PGRs with extensive expertise every year. Module participation is built around engagement in small peer learning sets at times to be agreed between participants in these groups, e.g. supporting flexible timetabling. Peer engagement with stimulus materials and activities (e.g. lectures, current research, resources, research questions) drive these peer learning encounters. Module themes (‘blocks’) are released on a highly structured basis across the term. Module assessment is supported by three live tutorials which all participants must attend.

Module Structure

This a ten week online only module.

Three online tutorials will support and supplement structured small group ‘peer learning’ sets. This enables students on the PhD register to develop a peer support network as they expand their understanding of teaching, learning, and assessment and their awareness of student services relevant to their roles as postgraduate teaching assistants, lab demonstrators, and seminar leaders. Module timetabling is flexible to accommodate the needs of GTAs working in busy Schools and Departments.

Please note this module is open to PhD students only at this time.

Module Learning Outcomes

The module is strongly oriented towards practice: participants develop insight into key areas of practice relevant to their current and future roles as educators in higher education. This module seeks to enable postgraduate researchers to:

1. Discuss the role of the PGR in teaching and supporting learning in higher education.
2. Develop insight into evidence-based practice in teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education.
3. Demonstrate the appropriate use of tools and technologies to support and enhance teaching and/or learning in your own disciplinary context.
4. Articulate/illustrate how your (emerging) values around professionalism in academic practice have been influenced through engagement with the module.

The module will run in Michaelmas Term for 10 weeks and there is no charge.  You will participate in weekly online discussion threads, contribute to journal entries and must be able to participate in the following 3 x 50 minute online tutorials on the following dates.

Timetable Hilary Term 2024

Timetable Michaelmas Term 2023

Assessment & Feedback in a Digital Context - Not running in 2023-24.

‘Assessment & Feedback in a Digital Context’ (‘A&F’) can form part of Trinity’s structured PhD programme and welcomes postgraduate research students with active roles in supporting teaching and learning/or assessment at Trinity. This fully-online 5-ECTS standalone structured PhD module aims to support GTAs with teaching/learning/assessment responsibilities in their role as a GTA and to consider where and how digital assessment and feedback practices can be used to enhance learning.  

The module is suitable for both for GTAs who have previously completed the 5 ECTS online module ‘Teaching & Learning for Graduate Teaching Assistants’ and for those PGRs newer to professional practice in teaching, learning, and assessment. Module participation is built around engagement in small peer learning sets at times to be agreed between participants in these groups, e.g. supporting flexible timetabling. Peer engagement with stimulus materials and activities (e.g. lectures, current research, resources, research questions) drive these peer learning encounters. Module themes (‘blocks’) are released on a highly structured basis across the term. Module assessment is supported by three live tutorials which all participants must attend.

The module addresses assessment and feedback as key areas of competence required of PGRs in roles supporting assessment. A&F seeks to enable postgraduate researchers to:

• Define what assessment and feedback mean to you in the context of your discipline.
• Reflect on and evaluate your evolving role in assessment and feedback as you make the shift from student to assessor.
• Identify how digital technologies can be used to enable and enhance assessment and feedback processes.
• Demonstrate engagement with the relevant literature of assessment feedback.

Module credits are linked to:  

• Participation in online discussion threads
• Ongoing engagement in peer learning sets
• Participation in three mandatory-attendance online tutorials
• Development of a resource document suitable for peer GTAs in their context
• Development of a reflective document on feedback in practice.  

Please note this module is open to PhD students only at this time.

Assessment Process

The module is graded on a pass/fail basis.

Module participants are expected to demonstrate satisfactory engagement with discussion board and journal prompts as well as evidence their engagement with their peers across the module (‘formative’ assessment).

As ‘summative’ assessment, they must also submit a digital resource document suitable for peer GTAs  (e.g. infographic, text-based resource, poster etc) and a short written reflective document focusing on the impact of the module on their own assessment and feedback practices.

Credits cannot be awarded for the module unless both summative components are completed; summative components will not be reviewed until all formative/continuous assessment activities have been completed.