There are many things to think about, find out, plan for, and organize as your teaching semester approaches. The Pre-semester Preparation chapter of the Online Teaching Guide for GSIs provides ways to pull them all together. We also recommend…
by Ravit Dotan, Philosophy Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 One of the most common problems GSIs encounter is low student participation in sections. Too often, only a handful of students ask questions, interact with the instructor, or interact with one another. This situation is unfortunate. First, active participation is crucial…
Every GSI should be familiar with this brief information about campus-wide and departmental policies that directly affect GSIs, along with the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
by Conrad Hengesbach, Mathematics The variety of the students’ backgrounds meant that everybody brought different prerequisites to the table, especially when it came to their training in first-semester calculus... I needed a mechanism to ensure that towards the end of the first week everybody was on the same boat.
by Naomi Leite, Anthropology The first section presents a double challenge...Simply put, how can a GSI use the first section to engage a disparate group of students who are not necessarily enthusiastic about their enrollment in a course whose topic they don’t yet understand?