Teaching Assistants' Training Program

Description

Reflective writing is commonly used to support learning in experiential and work-integrated learning contexts, to encourage self-assessment of a real-world learning experience while connecting it to theory or concepts learned in class. These kinds of assignments can be difficult for students to write and difficult for TAs to evaluate since they are unlike more typical “academic” genres of writing (e.g. the research essay). In this workshop, TAs will learn the goals, purposes, and benchmarks of success in reflective writing practice. TAs across the disciplines will be able to better support their students in writing these kinds of reflections, and communicating expectations around these assignments. We will introduce TAs to best practices around reflective writing, as well as some of the basic theory behind why reflective writing is used in these learning contexts. We will draw on concrete examples of assignments from multiple different disciplines throughout the workshop.