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Teaching and Supporting Learning for Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTA) 

Registration is now open for the Teaching & Supporting Learning module in Michaelmas Term 2024.

This fully online for-credit module (5 ECTs) is aimed at postgraduate research students (PGRs) with active roles in supporting teaching, learning, and assessment at Trinity.

Grounded in the scholarship of teaching & learning (SoTL), participants are supported to engage in a community of practice where they will develop familiarity with, and insight into, evidence-based approaches to pedagogical practice. The module introduces participants to core concepts of teaching, learning and assessment in higher education and supports participants to critically reflect on their professional roles and articulate their own philosophy of teaching, informed by pedagogical research.

This for-credit module can contribute to the award of the structured PhD.

Please note this module is open to PhD students only at this time.

Module Learning Outcomes

The module is strongly oriented towards practice: participants develop insight into key areas of practice relevant to their current and future roles as educators in higher education. On successful completion of this module participants should be able to:

  1. discuss the role of the postgraduate research student (PGR) in teaching and supporting learning in higher education;
  2. develop insight into evidence-based practice in teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education;
  3. demonstrate the appropriate use of tools and technologies to support and enhance teaching and/or learning in your own disciplinary context;
  4. articulate/illustrate how your (emerging) values around professionalism in academic practice have been influenced through engagement with the module.

Teaching & Learning Methods

Module themes (‘blocks’) are released on a structured basis across the 10-week duration of the module. This ‘flipped’ approach supports participants to engage with a wide variety of stimulus materials throughout the module.

Module participation is built around engagement in small peer learning sets at times to be agreed between participants in these groups. In this way, the module aims to be as flexible as possible, enabling participants to fit module participation into existing schedules. Peer engagement with the stimulus materials and activities drive activities within the peer learning sets.

Module assessment is supported by three live online tutorials which all participants must attend.

Assessment

The module is graded on a pass/fail basis.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment plays a key role in this module, strengthening feedback processes and supporting the evolving community of practice.

Formative assessment elements include:

  • contribution to discussion boards;
  • contribution to personal reflective journals;
  • engagement with peer learning sets (weekly).

Evidence of satisfactory engagement with formative assessment elements, combined with full attendance at all three online tutorials is required in order to submit the final summative assessment.

Summative assessment

There are two components to the summative assessment. Credits cannot be awarded for the module unless both components have been successfully completed.

1. Session Plan and Reflection

All module participants should prepare and submit a session plan suitable for use in their own professional context. A session plan should provide indicative detail of 'what the student does' (Biggs, 1999), what the lecturer does, and demonstrate evidence of reflection on designing teaching for learning. Accompanying the session plan will be a short reflection evidencing how peer feedback has influenced the design of the plan. 

2. Teaching Philosophy Statement (TPS)

All module participants should develop and submit a teaching philosophy statement which evidences the candidate's own beliefs, values, and practices relating to teaching, learning, and assessment. There is the option to present this in a format other than text (e.g. a visual artefact), which can be agreed with Module Tutors. The Statement of approximately 800 words will reflect learning from the Module and reference at least five sources from relevant literature.