Why teach Comm-B courses?

Being the instructor or TA for a Comm-B course is a wonderful opportunity to teach research, writing, and communication skills in conjunction with course content. Teaching a Comm-B course has particular teaching professionalization benefits for TAs, and many pedagogical benefits for anyone teaching Comm-B.

Teaching Comm-B provides TAs with teaching professionalization by:

Giving them training in teaching writing. All TAs must complete the Comm-B TA Training before their first semester teaching Comm-B. The training provides TAs with research-based best practices for providing feedback to student writing, running TA-student conferences, navigating teaching writing in the age of generative AI, and much more. TAs are welcome to take the training multiple times.

Giving them experience teaching writing. Being a TA for Comm-B provides experience teaching research, writing, and communication skills in a specific discipline. By coaching students through the writing process (through written feedback, individual conferences, and lessons), TAs learn a great deal about how students learn to write and communicate. Perhaps most obviously, this prepares TAs to teach other courses that use writing. Supporting student writers also teaches TAs about the writing process itself, pushing TAs to consider writing as both process and product. Additionally, experience teaching Comm-B can be helpful on the academic job market and in future faculty or academic staff roles that require supporting student writing (e.g., mentoring or advising graduate and undergraduate students writing theses and dissertations).

Are you a graduate student looking for even more professionalization around teaching with writing? Every spring semester, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) partners with The Delta Program to offer a semester-long course called “Using Writing to Teach in Any Discipline.” Check Delta’s website for registration information, or reach out to the WAC team.

Giving them experience teaching writing in a particular discipline. Comm-B TAs gain experience teaching the writing and communication conventions of their discipline (or an adjacent discipline). In teaching students about the ways of knowing and telling in a specific discipline, including common genres of writing, Comm-B TAs learn more about disciplinarity. This in turn may inform how they themselves approach writing in their own discipline, potentially impacting how they approach their thesis, dissertation, manuscripts, or other graduate writing projects.

Making them eligible to be a Comm-B TA Mentor. TAs who have completed the Comm-B TA Training (before their first semester teaching Comm-B) and have taught at least one semester of a Comm-B course are eligible to be Comm-B TA Mentors. Comm-B TA Mentors help facilitate the Comm-B TA Training (which happens before each fall and spring semester) along with the WAC team. Specifically, Comm-B TA Mentors design and facilitate a breakout session to help prepare training participants for teaching Comm-B. Interested in being a Comm-B TA Mentor? Reach out to the WAC team.

Teaching Comm-B provides instructors and TAs with pedagogical benefits by:

Offering ways to assess student learning throughout the course. The writing, research, and communication assignments of a Comm-B course provide both instructors and TAs with a way to gauge how students are grasping material at various points in the semester.

Yielding information about the effectiveness of their teaching. Because students are regularly completing and turning in writing and research assignments in a Comm-B course, it provides anyone teaching the course with frequent feedback about the effectiveness of their own teaching—whether that be giving a lecture, leading a discussion, or facilitating an activity. Reading student writing, for example, can reveal whether a particular lesson landed with students, or whether they need further support and explanation. Low-stakes, informal writing assignments such as Minute Papers and Muddiest Point can be particularly helpful for soliciting feedback on teaching. Consider browsing our page with Examples of Standard Low-Stakes Writing Activities & Assignments.

Offering opportunities for student-instructor connections. Much more so than courses designed around exams and quizzes, Comm-B courses offer opportunities for instructors and TAs to connect with students through instructor feedback, individual student-instructor conferences, and general coaching of students through the writing process. Instructors and TAs can get to know students through their writing, building rapport through supportive and growth-oriented feedback.

For more on the pedagogical benefits of teaching with writing—and information on how writing is a high-impact practice for students—check out our page, Why teach with writing?