Welcome!
This resource shares best practices, key considerations, and practical resources for working effectively and efficiently with Teaching Assistants. How instructors approach leadership and supervision of TA teams will depend on a number of contextual factors. This Resource provides suggestions to help you plan your own approach.
Throughout these pages you will find general guidelines illustrated with specific examples, building on the insights and experiences of the UW–Madison teaching community.
We created this Resource to:
- Offer proactive strategies to ensure you, your TAs, and your students have the best class experience possible.
- Share practical tools for effective working relationships among your teaching team.
- Advance teaching excellence at UW–Madison.
The Resource is divided into topics to consider before, during, and at the end of the semester. We hope to help you answer the questions listed below.
Resource for Instructors Working with TAs
Before the Semester
During the Semester
Finishing the Semester
Brought to you by:
We are the L&S TA Training & Support Team, part of the L&S Teaching and Learning Administration. We serve 1600+ TAs each semester in the College of Letters and Science and 400+ TAs every fall at L&S TA Training. From researching to develop our services, working with thousands of TAs, and collaborating with teaching and learning professionals across L&S, we know that simple things instructors do help their teaching teams succeed.
Navigate the Semester
1. Before the Semester
How will you start before the semester begins to establish a strong working relationship with your teaching team?
2. During the Semester
What do you want to do to keep your team working well together once the semester starts?
3. Finishing the Semester
What does preparing for the end of the semester and closing out time with your teaching team look like for you?
Created by:
Orion Risk and Lynne Prost
Selected Sources:
UW–Madison Teaching & Learning Symposium Sessions
2024: Better Teaching Through Collaborative Instructor-TA Partnerships. Breakout session.
2023: TAs Transforming Teaching: Promises and Practices of TA-Led Innovation. Breakout session.
UW–Madison Resources
Sustaining Effective Instructional Teams: Developed in 2016 by Castro, Chris; Schmid, Megan; Pesavento, Theresa; Higgins, Jenny. Breakout session at the UW-Madison Teaching & Learning Symposium.
Creating a Supportive TA Teaching Team: A Resource for Faculty: Developed in 2018 by a team of Gullickson Fellows in the College of Letters & Science, after conducting a series of interviews about best practices and common pitfalls within TA-faculty teaching teams at UW-Madison.
Building Effective TA Teaching Teams [no longer available]: Developed in 2020 as part of the L&S Remote Teaching Toolkit by Naomi Salmon, Theresa Pesavento, and Sarah Thal.
Thank You to Our Partners:
L&S TA Training & Support Team (esp. Danielle Clevenger, B Dowling, Morgan Henson, and Cameron Jones)
L&S Instructional Design Collaborative (esp. Molly Harris and Maria Widmer)
Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence
Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring
Suggestions, comments, or questions about this Resource?
More Support for Instructors
L&S Instructional Design Collaborative
Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring
How to Cite this Resource
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This means that you are welcome to adopt and adapt content, but we ask that you provide attribution to the L&S Teaching and Learning Administration and do not use the material for commercial purposes.
Example Attribution
“From Resource for Instructors Working with TAs by the L&S Teaching and Learning Administration, licensed under the BY-NC 4.0 license.”