Departmental Training for First-Appointment TAs

Thank you for contacting the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program (TATP) to facilitate a training session for teaching assistants (TAs) in your department/unit/program. Departments with more than 20 TAs that require first-appointment training can book a 2-hour synchronous training session. These sessions are not customizable, but departments can choose between online or in-person & hybrid teaching strategies for this 2-hour session. In order to complete the remaining 2 hours of mandatory paid training, the TATP recommends the 1-hour asynchronous sessions as outlined on our Job Training Page.

Please note: all TATP job training, including departmental training sessions will take place online.

The TATP office will contact your within 2 business days to confirm receipt of the form. Please book your training session no less than 3 weeks in advance, and provide 3 possible dates for your session.

All training requests are booked on a first-come, first-served basis and are confirmed only once the availability of TATP staff has been determined. Once a TATP staff member has been assigned to deliver TA training in your department, this peer graduate student trainer will contact your to finalize the details of the session. If you are booking a September training workshop, your session will be confirmed after August 1.

Please Note: The TATP is staffed by experienced graduate student TAs and Course Instructors. They work with a suite of training materials that have been developed by TAs for TAs. TATP peer trainers are not subject matter experts and will not be able to train your TAs to teach specific disciplinary content.

As stipulated in the collective agreement between the TA union and the University, a CUPE 3902 union steward must be allotted 30 minutes to speak at the end of any training session for first-contract TAs facilitated by the TATP. Once you have booked an on-site training session with us for your new TAs, the TATP will contact CUPE 3902 to invite a union representative to your department’s training session.

If you have any questions about departmental training for TAs, please contact us at services.ta@utoronto.ca.