There are a few similarities between Instructional Connections’ virtual teaching assistants (TAs) and traditional graduate assistants (GAs). Let’s look at the benefits, differences, and similarities to see which could benefit your online programming in the shifting university climate of 2020 and beyond.
What Is a Traditional Graduate Assistant?
A graduate assistant is a current graduate student who helps a professor conduct lab or study groups, grade papers or prepare lectures, and may sometimes lead classes or lectures. Graduate assistants may work in their own program or a different field. There is a stipend (financial assistance) that is provided for this type of part-time academic employment, and often the university pays or waves their tuition as well.
What Do Traditional Graduate Assistants Do?
A graduate assistant helps their professor teach large classes, grades homework and projects, may run academically-related errands, and help in other ways that the professor needs for the success of the class. Other graduate assistantships may include research, editing of manuscripts, even lecturing or running discussions in-class.
The classes that graduate assistants teach are usually introductory courses in their field of study, or a similar one, as they are not yet in the field and have little to no experience beyond their current classes. For example, an English GA may lead a 101 English course for Freshmen, whereas a GA in a Science field may prepare, set-up, and clean-up labs for an introductory lab class, they may also review and grade scientific journals from the students and clean instruments.
The most important duties of a graduate assistant are:
- Leading discussions and answering student questions within their understanding
- Grading student essays, projects, labs, and tests
- Recording grades and updating student records
What is a Virtual Teaching Assistant?
Unlike a graduate assistant, each Instructional Connection’s teaching assistant (AKA Virtual TA) is a highly-qualified, experienced professional in the appropriate academic field. Instead of current students, our virtual teaching assistants have already earned at least a Master’s or Doctoral degree from an accredited university. In fact, our virtual teaching assistants have an average of 14 years of industry experience in their field. This means your students are not being assisted by a current graduate student, but a professional in the field they are looking to join!
What Do Virtual Teaching Assistants Do?
Our virtual TAs are tremendous resources to students in their related fields. And our virtual teaching assistants’ goals are always aligned with your university’s specific priorities. Under the leadership and direction of your faculty, your virtual teaching assistant can assist with online grading, management of discussion threads, approved announcements, and day-to-day tasks.
Traditional graduate assistants mainly help in the classroom, and may lack experience in their field, whereas our virtual teaching assistants work online in distance learning programs (online courses) and have vast experience. Their responsibilities can include course issues related directly to distance learning, which has dramatically increased in 2020 due to COVID-19 and many universities moving toward fully online programs. This frees the faculty member of record to focus on engagement, course delivery, and outcomes.
The most important duties of an online teaching assistant are:
- Daily tasks of assisting the professor in online courses
- Answering questions, emails, and other messages from students 7 days a week
- Managing online discussion threads and in forums
- Posting approved announcements for the course
- Grading student essays, projects, labs, and tests
- Recording grades and updating student records
Instructional Connections’ Online Teaching Assistants Can Save Universities 20%-30%!
Universities that work with Instructional Connections can scale the delivery of their online education courses and degree programs at a substantially more affordable cost by using our online teaching assistants. By employing online TAs who directly support your Faculty of Record in online education courses and classrooms, your faculty can focus more time on student success and delegate supplemental tasks to our assistants.
