Welcome to TAs Orientation to Teaching Course Wiki
Living as both a graduate student and teaching assistant places demands on your time that often go unappreciated. This wiki will allow you to complete the assignments and activities that are required in this course - but to do so in a manner that is most efficient for the time you have.
No doubt, as a professional in your field, you collaborate with other professionals every day. That collaboration will be a requirement for successfully completing this course, as well. We will, as much as possible, attempt to group you with those who share a discipline-specific background; in that way, the assignments and solutions can be tailored to the students you are serving. However, you should still learn from the expertise from colleagues in other fields. Our common goal is to enhance the learning of our students - students who often sit in the classrooms of many different disciplines. Don't automatically argue that a technique won't work in your classroom; be open to exploring and collaborating with instructors whose content-area may be quite different from yours.
Tasks to complete to reach our goal:
Task One - Who are we?
Before we can discover how to best serve our community of students, we have to discover who we are. So, navigate to the Introductions page and let us know a little bit about you and your background. That information will also help us see how our backgrounds compare to our students.
Task Two - Who are our students?
Most good teachers realize that the importance of content they teach and their knowledge of it can be useless unless presented in a way that their students can grasp. So, an accurate look at students' backgrounds and the influences of those backgrounds on students' learning is important. During this step, you will discover some specifics about the students attending our institution. With your colleagues, you will brainstorm the ways those backgrounds might affect your students' interaction with the content material you present - or the way in which you present it. This will require you to complete two assignments with the links found in the Sidebar.
Task Three - How can you create a comfortable learning environment from the start?
Learning proceeds best when students have minimal distractions - whether external (e.g., classroom set-up or interactions among other students) or internal (e.g., fear of failure, previous negative experiences with the subject, cultural differences with the instructor). You will collaborate to have a good first start, both in lessening anxiety and setting up reasonable class expectations.
Task Four - How can you serve as the facilitator of active student learning?
You are not serving as the instructor of record, rather as the assistant to that instructor. Yet, you often serve as the primary arbiter of learning in the classroom because you have greater face to face contact with the students. You will explore principles of active or engaged learning and means of creating this attitude with your students. This exploration will also entail your evaluation of students' attitudes and the expectations of the instructor of record for your courses. We will troubleshoot ways of mediating differing expectations.
Whenever you're working in our course wiki, you can always add information or edit what's here. Just click the "Edit" button at the top or bottom of the page.
That action will open up the page with many of the editing features you are used to using. 
Next, type whatever you want to add to tables or pages. You can also add urls or images by clicking on the appropriate links on the edit toolbar at the top. When you finish, don't forget to click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.
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