The challenge of TA training in the 1990s (original) (raw)

Instructional Issues for Teaching Assistants

Innovative Higher Education, 2001

This study examined teaching assistants' perceptions of various instructional issues and explored whether their perceptions were affected by nationality, gender, and academic discipline. The study generated significant, positive results. Logistic regression with dummy coding revealed significant predictors of teaching assistants' instructional roles, teaching style, instructional methods, communication strategies, and potential problems. Discussion of the results, implications, and recommendations for future research are included.

The Promise and the Performance: What's Really Basic in Teaching TAs

1976

In order to promote professionalism and transform novice teaching assistants into capable instructors, the University of New Mexico has established a required course in "Teaching Composition." The course attempts to define institutional and departmental goals, and explore such issues in class management as organization, discipline, motivation, and plagarism. Other basics in the training of TAs include the orientation toward professional publishing, survey of major topic areas in the language arts, and the study of research on teaching methods, composition, and literature. Additionally, a section on dialects explores the implications of language diversity. Feedback for TAs is provided by direct classroom observation by an independent expert and anonymous evaluations by students. self-evaluation by the assistants is also stressed, and an attempt is made to provide an environment within the department that encourages and acknowledges their efforts.

Developing Teaching Assistants as Members of the University Teaching Team

Developing Teaching Assistants as Members of the University Teaching Team examined two TA training programs at the University of Toronto. The study found that both programs fostered teaching practices that were conducive to deep student learning – less focused on information transfer and more focused on students’ conceptual understanding of course content. According to the study, TAs value their development as teachers and they believe the skills they acquire, such as planning and time management, will benefit their future careers.

(311) Teaching Assistants as a Source of Continuity and Improvement in the Classroom

HortScience, 2006

It may seem paradoxical that a teaching assistant (TA), whose involvement in a particular class may be limited to a single semester, can provide continuity in the classroom from year to year. Improvement in TA performance from one year to the next also seems difficult to achieve under such circumstances. However, when TAs are encouraged to document classroom activities, specific TA responsibilities, and student concerns, this documentation may be useful in achieving continuity, improved TA performance, and result in a better classroom experience for the students. In addition to the benefit of documentation, TAs, in conjunction with faculty, can together reflect upon how well the objectives of specific laboratories were met. TAs can contribute to generating and documenting ideas that may be implemented to help improve student learning in the future. Each TA comes to the course with a unique collection of horticultural and teaching experiences and has the potential to aid faculty in c...

Effectively preparing, collaborating with and empowering Teaching Assistants

National Conference on the Beginning Design Student , 2019

While Teaching Assistants (TAs) have been regularly used in large lecture courses and beginning design education in the United States for over 150 years, their preparation, use and empowerment has not been carefully examined. More recently, the preparation and use of Teaching Assistants has become increasingly codified to meet the ever-changing demands and expectations of students, Teaching Assistants, faculty, universities, professions, and the general public. This paper is organized into three sections: First, we will examine how the role of a Teaching Assistant has radically changed in the past 40 years, from its past focus on assisting an individual faculty in the teaching of their class to becoming an integral member of a co-teaching team of students, Teaching Assistants and faculty today. Second, we share a series of best practices for preparing, collaborating with and empowering Teaching Assistants. Our advice is based on the authors’ past 40 years of experience working with over 100+ Teaching Assistants and teaching over 15,000 freshmen and sophomores campus wide in both face-to-face and online classes. Third, we will invite you, and other Teaching Assistants and faculty, to join the discussion, share your own experiences and innovations, and lay the foundations for your own future teaching pedagogy and research. While our paper and recommendations are primarily for first-time Teaching Assistants assigned to large lecture classes and beginning design studios, they are also broadly applicable to many teaching situations in both face-to-face and online courses throughout the university.

Toward a Comprehensive Conceptualization of TA Education: Contents, Commitments, Structures

2001

This paper focuses on the preparation of graduate students for teaching within graduate foreign language departments. Despite big changes and much effort that has gone into reforming the training and teaching of language education professional in recent years, teaching assistant education within the intellectual-academic work of graduate programs has been given limited attention. Very little is done to help graduate student teaching assistants become productive and successful teacher-researchers. It is argued that the foreign language profession in general and graduate programs in particular must aggressively pursue a comprehensive reconceptualization of the preparation of graduate students for teaching. An academic focus must be found that is encompassing enough to accommodate teaching and research issues in an inclusive fashion. Faculty members of a graduate program must take responsibility for educating the department's graduate students as teachers. These issues are examined in the context of a case study relating to such issues as they were encountered at the German Department at Georgetown University. The details and results of attempts to implement these changes in that department are discussed in detail. (Contains 41 references.) (KFT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the ori inal document. rD tr) Toward a Comprehensive Conceptualization of TA Education: Contents, Commitments, Structures'

Training Teaching Assistants by Offering an Introductory Course

Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2022

Teaching assistants (TAs) are often used in computer science (CS) courses to conduct tutorials in smaller groups and to be able to provide students with one-to-one help sessions. TAs can also assist with the assessment, which can be time-consuming in large classes. Previous research does, however, indicate that TAs can be poorly prepared for their work tasks. In this experience report, we present a TA training course that addresses this issue and prepares new TAs for their responsibilities. This includes conducting tutorials, tutoring and providing students with useful feedback in lab settings, and conducting assessments. In addition, we also aimed at creating a safe space for our TAs to discuss challenges and fears that they foresee or have already experienced as TAs. To do this, we developed an introductory course consisting of five modules, that are based on previous research on TAs in CS and in the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The modules are: HR questions, classroom teaching, helping and supervising in lab sessions, assessment, and reflection and discussion. The course is given in a blended learning format, where the first three modules are student-paced online modules, while the last two are synchronous meetings. To evaluate the training, we present course evaluation results from 53 TAs who enrolled in this 6-hours course during the 2020/2021 academic year. We conclude that this TA training course has been well appreciated by almost all the participants, discuss lessons learned and future plans. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computing education; Computer science education.