Video made the TA a star

Brent Urbanski is an award-winning teaching assistant for PSYCH 1X03 – Introduction to Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour and PSYCH 1XX3 – Foundations of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour

It’s easy to understand why Brent Urbanski is such a popular teaching assistant that he won the McMaster Students Union TA of the Year award.

A fourth-year student in the Psychology, Behaviour and Neuroscience program, he didn’t just teach — he supported the first-year undergraduates in his tutorial group with custom videos, weekly content summary sheets and a focus on helping people adapt to the university environment overall.

“Yes, you’re going to teach them the content,” he says, “but they’re also going to appreciate it if you suggest strategies for dealing with this new environment that they’ve been thrust into.”

Urbanski remembers his first-year experience and tries to calm potential fears in his students.

“There’s the pressure, there’s the participation grade, the need to learn the content because there’s a quiz on Friday, then there’s mid-terms, exams, all of that,” he says. “You’re setting a tone in terms of both learning and dealing with the structure itself. It’s something you need to take seriously as a teaching assistant.”

Another thing he remembers from his early days at McMaster was feeling very timid in classes. As an introvert, speaking in front of groups was one of the biggest challenges for him to overcome personally while learning to lead a tutorial.

“It’s an experience that changes you,” says Urbanski, referring to the Applied Educational Psychology course, which is available specifically to teaching assistants for the introductory course. One of their assignments was to write and present a version of a TED Talk to develop the communication skills and structured presentations needed to be effective in the role.

Introduction to Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour is one of the largest courses at McMaster, with approximately 2000 students enrolled. The three dozen or so teaching assistants for the course became a fairly tight-knit group, says Urbanski, pointing out that one of the benefits of the role is built-in networking with other peers in the field.

He’ll be back as a teaching assistant again next year and offers some guidance for those considering joining him.

“Don’t treat it as a job,” he says. “You get into teaching and TA-ing because you want to develop the skills, because you really care about the content and because you genuinely want to help others learn the stuff.

“For me, TA-ing always came first,” he continues. “For me to commit to being a TA is to commit to 50 students coming into first year. And given that I’m one person committed to 50 other people, I found it hard to rationalize focussing on anything else, personally. I suppose that’s why I’ve had the success that I’ve had – because it really matters to me.”

And his work really matters to his students, who nominated him for TA of the Year. Urbanski says connecting with individual students and feeling like he was making a difference was a highlight of the year for him.

“If you connect with them, students tend to let you know the impact you’re making. It’s not uncommon for them to send you an email after the course and even come up to you after tutorial and say, ‘you’ve done a great job.’ It’s little things like that that are really memorable.”

• TA Award Video
• Science of Learning Video
• Weekly ‘IntroPsych Archives’ Video
• Weekly ‘Content Condensation’ Sheet