[ATTW-L] Grad teaching assistants and tech comm service courses

Thu Apr 9 14:48:43 UTC 2020

Hi, Abi,

The requirements at North Dakota State have changed a bit since you were a MA student here a decade ago, shortly after the vertical writing programs for undergrad general education were rolled out. The teaching of Upper-Division Writing courses<https://www.ndsu.edu/english/writing_programs/upper_division_writing_courses/>, such as Writing in the Technical Professions and Business & Professional Writing, is limited to PhD students (as well as faculty and lecturers, of course).

Even then, PhD students must first have accumulated at least two years’ experience teaching first-year writing. They also must have taken this course:

ENGL 765. Upper Division Writing: Pedagogy, Practice, and Technology. 3 Credits.
Theory, practice, and pedagogy for teaching upper-division writing classes. Discussion will include a number of writing studies topics, including Writing across Curriculum (WAC), Writing in the Disciplines (WID), and writing program administration.

Created and taught in its early years by Andy Mara, it’s now taught by Mary McCall and Dan Kenzie. While taking the course, which is open to MA students as well, each grad student picks one of the nine UDW courses in English (there are a few others offered by other departments and specific to their disciplines, such as the foreign languages, history, microbiology, and pharmacy ) to focus on and explore, with a view to teaching that undergraduate course when they’re fully qualified.

There are no requirements for to teach online; however, grad students are encouraged to sign up for a several-day remunerated summer workshop focused on methods of online teaching and led by one of the English department’s former grad students. Naturally, all current UDW instructors are now gaining sink-or-swim online teaching experience, as all of NDSU’s course migrated to fully online delivery following spring break and through the end of the semester.

Good luck!—and do keep your questions coming.

Bruce
--
Bruce Maylath, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Upper-Division Writing Coordinator
Department of English, #2320
318-E20 Minard Hall
North Dakota State University
P.O. Box 6050
Fargo, ND  58108-6050  USA

Tel.: 1-701-231-7176
E-mail: Bruce.Maylath at ndus.edu <applewebdata://4929FB8A-A5B1-46C1-958B-C878C7CC93DC/Bruce.Maylath@ndsu.edu>

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From: ATTW-L <attw-l-bounces at attw.org> on behalf of "Bay, Jennifer L" <jbay at purdue.edu>
Date: Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 8:44 AM
To: "attw-l at attw.org" <attw-l at attw.org>
Subject: Re: [ATTW-L] Grad teaching assistants and tech comm service courses

Hi Abigail,

Purdue’s TA training is very similar to Penn State’s—a year-long practicum for first-year writing, then a semester long practicum focused on teaching our service course in business writing. Although we do not have official practica for teaching online or technical writing, we have been offering an online teaching “boot-camp” for our instructors in May before they teach online (almost all of our summer offerings are online), as well as informal training for teaching technical writing. We have a strong secondary area for our PhD students in Professional and Technical Writing, so they are also supported by that advanced coursework.

TAs can customize their courses as they progress through the program as long as they meet course outcomes, and we also maintain an internal, crowd-sourced repository of syllabi, assignments and class activities.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Jenny

----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Jennifer Bay
Associate Professor of English
Director of Professional Writing
Purdue University
jbay at purdue.edu<https://owa.purdue.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=KgY9tnDwgUmpUmW_dbtCb2KPbixdtNAIjcoCqlcuYj4Ai593qjE7F8Dapm8YpuPDGNQJ1JiULvw.&URL=mailto%3ajbay%40purdue.edu>
----------------------------------------------------

From: ATTW-L <attw-l-bounces at attw.org> on behalf of Stuart Selber <selber at psu.edu>
Date: Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 9:02 AM
To: "Bakke, Abigail R" <abigail.bakke at mnsu.edu>
Cc: "attw-l at attw.org" <attw-l at attw.org>
Subject: Re: [ATTW-L] Grad teaching assistants and tech comm service courses

Hi Abigail--

All of the graduate students at Penn State begin by teaching first-year composition, and with that comes a two-semester teaching practicum.

After they have completed this requirement they can then teach our service course in technical communication, which comes with a one-semeter teaching practicum. If they want to also teach business writing they take a practicum for that course too. The practicum meets weekly, and the students use a common syllabus, assignments, etc. They can customize their own version of the service course down the road.

We also have a practicum for online teaching.

Our students have 3-4 semesters of teacher training (or more) before they hit the job market.

Stuart

Stuart A. Selber
Associate Professor of English
Director of Digital Education
Director of The Penn State Digital English Studio
Department of English
Penn State University
University Park, PA 16802

selber at psu.edu<mailto:selber at psu.edu>
http://sites.psu.edu/selber
http://www.des.psu.edu
814-863-8032
814-863-7285 (fax)

On Apr 8, 2020, at 1:09 PM, Bakke, Abigail R <abigail.bakke at mnsu.edu<mailto:abigail.bakke at mnsu.edu>> wrote:

Hi all,

I'm working on a proposal for training tech comm grad students to teach our tech comm service courses. As part of that process, I want to get a sense of how other programs handle this.

If your program offers TAships to tech comm master's and/or PhD students, what are the qualifications or requirements for those grad students to teach tech comm? For instance, must they teach first-year comp first?

What about teaching online - what additional qualifications/requirements are in place for TAs to teach courses online?

Thanks for your help.

Abi

Abigail Bakke, PhD

Assistant Professor, Technical Communication
Department of English
Minnesota State University, Mankato
Armstrong 307H
(507) 389-1035
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