Promote a student to teaching assistant

Updated 02 Apr 2024

In some courses, instructors and section instructors can use the roster to promote an active student to the teaching assistant role in your course.

  • The teaching assistant role applies within one course and not to any other course in which the student is enrolled.
  • Teaching assistants access the same tools as instructors within a course except the roster. Teaching assistants can't edit course details or delete a course. For details about automatic and editable privileges in Mastering courses, see course privileges.
  1. If available in your course, select Manage Course from the main menu, and then select Course Roster or in Mastering, Roles and Enrollment Status.

    (In some courses, select Course Roster under Course Tools.)

  2. To find the active student you want to promote to teaching assistant in the Name column, type a few letters of the student's name or email address in the search field the search icon. (Select Show All to clear your search results.) You can also choose the first letter of the student’s last name in the alphabetical list.
  3. In the Role column, select Student.

    Note: If a student is enrolled with temporary access, the student's role cannot be changed during the active temporary access period. After the student pays for access, the Role menu is available.

  4. For Role, select Teaching Assistant.

    You can later change this option back to Student to discontinue access to instructor tools.

  5. Select Close the close icon to go back to the list.

    The student’s row is highlighted to indicate a change.

  6. Change the role for additional students, if necessary.

  7. Select Save to apply changes to all highlighted rows in the list, or Cancel to discard all changes and close the roster.

    The student’s role is now Teaching Assistant.

You can show or hide a teaching assistant in students’ course details. By default teaching assistants are hidden from the Teaching Staff list in the details. If there are many teaching assistants in your course, you might want to show only a few of them to keep the Teaching Staff list short.

Hiding teaching assistants does not change their access privileges in the course.

  1. Use the search field the search icon or the alphabetical list to find a teaching assistant in the Name column.

    The Hide column indicates whether the teaching assistant is currently shown or hidden in students’ course details.

  2. In the Hide column select Hidden or Shown.
  3. For Hide/show name in students' course details, select Hide or Show.
  4. Select Close the close icon to go back to the list.

    The row is highlighted to indicate a change.

  5. Change the role for additional teaching assistants, if necessary.
  6. Select Save to apply changes to all highlighted rows in the list, or Cancel to discard all changes and close the roster.

For section instructor enrollment, see Enroll as a section instructor.