Teaching assistants
These pages provide information for teaching assistants within the School of Social Sciences. There is a Teaching Assistant Hub on the Faculty web site that provides further information.
Aims
The University of Manchester is committed to delivering outstanding learning and student experience. In the Faculty of Humanities, Teaching Assistants play an important role in the delivery of high quality teaching to undergraduates.
As a GTA, you will be treated as a member of staff with respect to your teaching activities, and you will be provided with training free of charge as part of your professional development.
As this is a professional role there are minimum training requirements which must be met before teaching commences in October. This amounts to 7 hours of online training and 9-12 hours of workshops delivered in Schools and Discipline Areas. The online units are designed to allow flexibility and if you already have teaching experience you will find they take less time to complete.
During the first semester of teaching you will also receive up to three hours of online marking training and be expected to attend a two hour teaching development forum.
Teaching Hours
Teaching Assistant work being undertaken by a Humanities full-time PGR student must adhere to a maximum of 180 hours per academic year.
180 hours, as detailed in the Humanities Teaching Assistant Policy, is standard practice within Higher Education and the limit is intended to ensure that full-time PGR students have sufficient time to complete their PhD studies.
In line with Faculty policy and the University of Manchester’s duty of care to PGR students to ensure submission of a high quality and timely thesis (see PGR Code of Practice) it is recommended that this 180 hours is not exceeded by Schools unless there are ‘emergency’ or ‘exceptional circumstances’.
First Year PhD Students - Work Allocation
Whilst we accept applications to the GTA Pool from all PGR students, please note that the School does not usually allocate work to first years. This is to allow new PhD students to focus on the first year of their PhD programme. However, in cases where work is allocated to new PhD students, it is especially important that permission is received from your supervisor to undertake the work.