“Quick Tip” Submissions

Got 15-20 minutes? Submit a Quick Tip!

The TA Office community thrives on the sharing of ideas. As such, we invite you to submit your pedagogical advice. The idea is to share strategies and practices that each T.A. can combine and tailor to their own students’ needs. Please remember that:

All content should focus on general concepts or policies, not course-specific assignments. This way your information relevant for T.A.s who teach other courses, teach at other institutions, or who may teach your course after the curriculum has been altered. For example: “Explaining an Essay Prompt” works, but “Explaining Essay 2” is too specific for our purposes. (Referring to specific readings or textbooks is just fine, as long as you specify what text you are teaching.)

Additionally, please don’t submit entire lesson plans. 

Reading the following submission guidelines will ensure a professional, easy-to read post that will help enrich our community and our practices:

Content Categories

Composition Concepts

Got an activity that went swimmingly, a video clip that resonated, or an in-class writing the students loved? Tell us about it! 

• What is the context for your activity or resource? What problem are you solving, or what concept are you addressing/teaching? 

• How did you use the activity or resource in your class? Consider creating steps or instructions that another TA can follow if they decide to use this activity.

• How did students respond, and what did they seem to gain from the activity or use of the resource? 

Classroom Management

Have you finally created the perfect attendance policy, sucessfully navigated plaigairism issues, or mastered the art of the online quiz? Tell us about it! Consider addressing some of the following items in your post:

• What issue does your suggestion address?

• What action did you take or policy did you include in your syllabus?

• How did students seem to respond?

• What considerations should someone keep in mind if they want to enact a similar policy or classroom management tactic?

style and formatting 

To keep in line with the goalsof this website, please consider the following:

• Please use headings to help users quickly and easily navigate your post. Heading styles can be selected from the drop-down menu on the top left of the editing toolbar.

• Use bold or italics to emphasize important terms, add visual appeal, and increase the usability of your post.

• Please do not use students names. Borrow some fabulous pseudonyms if needed (these are from Friends): “Regina Philange seemed to enjoy the activity, and Ken Adams was unusually conversant in class.” 

• You can include videos and images with your post, but they must be hosted online, not uploaded from your computer, for the website to be able to access the photo. Please make sure you have copyright permissions for images and credit your source, and do not include images of students without their permission. 

• Use your professional persona: Your post can be included in future academic and professional CVs, so channel your professional side! Please be respectful of the department, your colleagues, and your students.

• Be sure to tag your post with one or more relevant tags from the website’s existing tags menu.