GTA (old)

A  Working as a GTA provides you with an opportunity to broaden your experience at Imperial College, and develop further skills. These include learning to teach, convey complex technical concepts, writing/communication skills, etc. Furthermore, you may find that acting as a GTA helps improve your own technical abilities (both theoretical and practical), broaden your knowledge base, and gain communication and task management experience. 

B  When considering a career in academia, teaching experience is important and GTA work allows building up a teaching portfolio and even becoming aware of one’s own teaching style.

C   Being a GTA, makes the CV look good.

D  On top of that, GTAs are paid in addition to your usual bursary.

Please note that students should not work more than 20 hours a week, according to the College's Employment policy. However, the Graduate School recommends that on average GTAs should teach less than six hours per week and teaching should not exceed 10 hours in any week. Assuming that there are 25 teaching weeks, no GTA should work for more than 150 hours in total over the academic year.

GTAs are paid a higher or a lower rate depending on the type of activity. The rates are determined by the College each year and can be found here.

• Higher rate of £24.48 per hour: study groups, one-to-one tutorials
• Lower rate of £13.97 per hour: lab presentations, marking, invigilation

As part of the efforts to make GTA work more attractive, the Department will compensate (or at least partly compensate) for extra preparation time of 1 hour per week spent on GTA work (study groups and lab demonstration) at a rate of £13.97 per hour.

This will be on top of the current GTA pay and needs authorisation by Dr Andrei Kozlov. It should be noted that since the current higher rate (£24.48 per hour) for study groups already accounts for some preparation time, only extra hours will be compensated  for (i.e. if one study group session need two hours of preparation, only the one extra hour will be compensated for).

Before first payment, GTAs need to fill in the Casual Worker Joining Form (Pay 8a) and Letter of Understanding (LoU) and hand it in to the Departmental Finance Office (Level 3 RSM 318) with their passport. Then you need to be registered in the internal GTA payment database, the link to which will be sent by the Teaching Office (please also provide your CID number and DoB). 

The Department requires the GTAs to seek permission from their supervisors prior to starting their teaching. Furthermore, GTAs will need to have either already attended the GTA training course offered by the Faculty of Engineering, or have registered to do any training, including workshops offered by the Educational Development Unit, which are particularly aimed at GTAs who are assessing student work.

Formal GTA training and support is offered in form of:

• Subject-specific briefing by respective academics
• Faculty of Engineering: Specific GTA workshop
• Educational Development Unit: Special skill courses
• Graduate School: Professional skills courses
• Blackboard: technological resources
• GTA guidance booklet 'Starting to teach in Higher Education'
• The STAR Framework: Recognising and rewarding teaching

The Faculty of Engineering runs a comprehensive GTA Teacher Training workshop touching upon Learning Basics, Small Group Teaching and Assessment. The discussions in forums are normally very much anticipated and useful.

The Educational Development Unit  (EDU) is there to support learning and teaching and runs regular workshops on marking and giving feedback which are crucial aspects of the student experience. 

The Graduate School of Imperial College is focused on broadening and enriching the academic experience of Postgraduate students in the wider sense. Offered are special events of networking and transferrable skill courses which GTAs can use in order to develop in general. Such courses are often not GTA specific and therefore not the type of training accepted as requirement for GTA activity.

Graduate School courses, EDU workshops and Faculty training have all been brought together in the newly designed The STAR Framework which supports skill development, recognises and rewards teaching skills and committment to teaching. The framework has been accredited by the Higher Education Academy (HEA), which means GTAs can apply to become Associate or Senior Fellow or Fellow of the HEA after doing respective STAR workshops. How it all works is explained here.

Finally, technology offers support in form of the VLE, also called Blackboard. To enrol go to the Blackboard VLE homepage - and do the following:

• Select 'Course List' from the right hand side
• Select 'NQ Faculty of Engineering' from the drop down course list
• Select 'NQ-GTA Resources'
• Click on the icon to register using your Imperial username and password.

Alternatively, GTAs are always welcome to email Teaching Office or Dr Andrei Kozlov if they need help or guidance.

Every year after the end of Spring term, the students vote for their GTA of the Year. The winner of the Departmental GTA of the Year Award will be nominated for the Faculty of Engineering GTA of the Year Prize. 

Departmental GTA of the Year 2015 was Antonio Stanziola.
Departmental GTA of the Year 2014 was Yesna Yildiz.
Departmental GTA of the Year 2013 was Dr Martina Wicklein.
(She also won the Faculty GTA of the Year)
Departmental GTA of the Year 2012 was  William Abbott.
Departmental GTA of the Year 2011 was  Andreas Procopiou.
Depart mental GTA of the Year 2010 was  Daniel Schwyn.
Department al GTA of the Year 2009 was  Spyridon Masouros.

Courses available for GTAs