Glossary
Graduate Teaching Assistant Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential graduate teaching assistant terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key graduate teaching assistant vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in graduate teaching assistant training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Academic integrity
- Honesty rules.
- Assistantship
- Paid graduate position.
- Course coordinator
- Faculty who runs a course.
- Discussion section
- Small group with a TA.
- FERPA
- Student privacy law.
- Graduate school
- Master’s or doctoral study.
- Instructor of record
- Person responsible for a course.
- Lab section
- Hands-on class.
- Office hours
- Time for students.
- Proctor
- Exam supervisor.
- Recitation
- Problem-solving section.
- Rubric
- Scoring guide.
- Stipend
- Fixed payment.
- Teaching portfolio
- Record of teaching.
- Tuition waiver
- Tuition covered.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Graduate Teaching Assistant practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Graduate Teaching Assistant training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.