Information Technology Teaching Assistant Job Description

An Information Technology Teaching Assistant works beside the instructor of record in computing courses: introductory programming, networking, operating systems, cybersecurity and help desk support. The instructor designs the course and signs off on final grades. The assistant keeps the lab running, fields the questions that pile up when a full section attempts the same exercise at once, and turns a stack of submissions into feedback a student can act on.

The title covers two kinds of appointment. At a university, the post may go to a graduate or advanced undergraduate student assigned to a computer science or information systems course for a term. At a community college, the same work can be a classified staff job. The Los Angeles Community College District, for example, keeps a class called Instructional Assistant, Info Technology, whose definition is to monitor and maintain one or more instructional computer laboratories and help students with computer programming, equipment operation and standard software applications.

The federal occupational profile for postsecondary teaching assistants names the core tasks: evaluating and grading examinations, assignments and papers and recording grades; leading discussion sections, tutorials or laboratory sections; and developing teaching materials such as syllabi, visual aids and answer keys. In an IT course each of those takes a technical form. Grading means reading code for logic, structure and style, not only checking that it compiles. Leading a lab section means walking a student through a default gateway that sits outside the configured subnet, or a virtual machine that refuses to start because hardware virtualization is switched off in the firmware. Developing materials means rewriting a lab handout after a router operating system update or a cloud console redesign moves the buttons.

The room itself is part of the job. Workstations need fresh images between sections, software licenses lapse, and a rack of switches cabled one way by the morning class has to be reset before the afternoon class arrives. The LACCD class specification has the assistant scheduling and overseeing lab use by students, faculty and staff, keeping inventory records of supplies and equipment, and helping instructors prepare lab materials such as computer operating instructions, lab problems and documentation.

Generative AI has added a newer task in some courses. In 2023, Harvard's CS50 deployed AI-based tools, including an AI chatbot called the CS50 Duck, and the course team's 2025 conference paper describes a model-evaluation backend that teaching assistants periodically review so the system stays aligned with instructional objectives. Where a course runs a tool like that, the TA judges a chatbot's answers as well as students' code.

Outside the lab, the week fills with office hours, the course discussion board in Canvas, Moodle or Ed, autograder setup in tools such as Gradescope, and proctoring practical exams. In a course mapped to an industry exam such as CompTIA A+ or Cisco's CCNA, the assistant also runs practice tests and explains why a wrong answer is wrong.

The entry route depends on who is hiring.

University appointments. A teaching assistantship in a computer science or information systems department is tied to enrollment. Departments may pick students, at the graduate or upper-division undergraduate level, who have done well in the course they will support. As a rough guide, a graduate TA holds a bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems or a related field and has zero to two years of work after it.

Community college staff classes. Districts write their own entrance qualifications into class specifications. LACCD's Instructional Assistant, Info Technology class accepts either an associate degree or its equivalent, with course work in at least two computer programming languages, basic computer operations and operating systems, and computer applications software, or graduation from high school or its equivalent plus two years of recent, full-time, paid programming and computer experience. Other districts set different terms, so read the specification for the class you apply to.

K-12 programs. An aide who works in a program paid for with federal Title I, Part A funds falls under 34 CFR 200.58: a high school diploma or its equivalent, plus, for anyone hired after Jan. 8, 2002, two years of college study, an associate degree, or a formal state or local academic assessment.

Certifications worth holding. None is a legal requirement for the role, but holding the exam the students are preparing for gives a TA the same objectives list they are studying:

• CompTIA A+ (CompTIA) for hardware, operating system and support courses
• CompTIA Network+ (CompTIA) for networking fundamentals
• CompTIA Security+ (CompTIA) for introductory security courses
• Cisco Certified Network Associate, CCNA (Cisco) for routing and switching labs

Technical skills. A working command of the Linux shell and Windows administration, PowerShell basics, virtualization in VirtualBox, VMware or Hyper-V, Cisco Packet Tracer for simulated networks, Git and GitHub for code submission, and at least one teaching language such as Python or Java. Comfort with a learning management system (Canvas, Moodle or Blackboard) and an autograder saves time.

Classroom skills. The core skill is diagnosis: telling a conceptual gap from a typo within a minute of looking at a screen, then choosing a hint over an answer. A strong TA writes feedback that says what to try next, applies the rubric the same way on the fortieth submission as on the first, and knows the course's academic integrity and AI-use policy well enough to explain it to a student without improvising.

BLS does not report information technology teaching assistants separately. They fall inside the broader occupation of postsecondary teaching assistants, which counted 164,090 workers in May 2025 at a median annual wage of $42,910. That group spans every subject, from chemistry labs to composition sections, so the national numbers describe the occupation rather than computing courses alone.

The industry rows show where the community college version of the job sits. Junior colleges employed 17,580 postsecondary teaching assistants in May 2025, at a median of $44,790. Technical and trade schools employed 880, at a median of $39,620. O*NET rates the occupation's 2025 to 2035 growth as average (3% to 4%), with about 25,700 openings a year.

Enrollment is the number to watch for this particular specialty. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported on Jan. 15, 2026 that fall 2025 enrollment in computer and information science programs declined across all award and institution types, with changes ranging from -3.6 percent at one undergraduate institution type to -14.0 percent at the graduate level. TA assignments are made course by course, so a candidate weighing an offer should ask how the department's section counts and TA allocations have moved since that report.

On artificial intelligence, a detailed public record of how an AI tutor works alongside human TAs comes from Harvard's CS50. By mid-November 2024, according to the course team's SIGCSE TS 2025 paper, approximately 211,000 students had used the CS50 Duck through the online course, and it had processed 10 million queries at an average cost of $1.50 per student per year. The same paper reports that 72 current teaching fellows at Harvard and Yale took part in Fall 2024 evaluations comparing versions of the model. The human role in that setup is evaluation and oversight: deciding whether an AI tutor's answer teaches or simply solves. That is a skill an IT TA can build and point to.

What the job does not offer is permanence. A graduate assistantship ends with the degree, and a part-time staff assignment depends on the schedule of classes each term. The value lies in what it leads to. Next steps can include:

• Adjunct or full-time instructor roles in community college computing programs
• Corporate IT trainer or technical instructor positions, where lab-building and explanation skills transfer directly
• Instructional designer roles on teams that build online technical courses
• Help desk lead, systems administrator or network technician jobs for those who want to stay hands-on
• Doctoral study and research, for graduate TAs who move from teaching to a research assistantship

Whichever direction, keep a record as you go: lab handouts you wrote, autograder tests you built, and a reference from the instructor who watched you run a section.

Dear Dr. Okafor,

Please consider me for your opening for a teaching assistant to support CIS 110 and Networking Fundamentals at Ridgeview Community College. I finished my associate degree in network technology at Ridgeview two years ago, and since then I have worked as a desktop support technician at a regional credit union while completing my bachelor's degree online. I hold CompTIA A+ and Network+.

My current job is mostly about explaining. When a branch manager calls because a printer vanished from the network, I have to fix the problem and also say what happened in plain words so the next call goes faster. I built a short troubleshooting guide for our tellers, with screenshots, and our team still uses it when we onboard new branch staff.

Teaching is where I want to take that. Last spring I volunteered in Professor Lindqvist's evening lab as an unpaid tutor. I learned to watch a student's screen for a minute before speaking, to ask what they expected the command to do, and to give a hint instead of the answer. I also helped reimage the lab after a failed update and rewrote two Packet Tracer exercises when the topology files would not open in the new version.

I understand that this role includes lab upkeep, grading against your rubrics, and holding office hours at times that suit evening students. I am comfortable with Canvas and have used Gradescope as a student. I would follow your department's AI-use policy closely, and I am glad to review AI tutor responses if the course uses one.

My schedule allows me to cover both morning and evening sections. Thank you for considering my application. I would welcome a conversation about how I can support your students.

Sincerely, Marisol Vega