My educational research life has officially come full circle. Please indulge me this story before I get into some of the ideas I have been exploring around Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs).

In the fall of my freshman year (a long long time ago…in a lecture hall far far away) I was struggling academically. My chemistry professor at the time, Dr. Wagner, offered a set of Science Orientation Workshops that were proctored by a set of undergraduate students. The purpose of the workshops were to support the development of skills needed to be successful in college level science (and college in general). Finding myself struggling academically I attended these workshops on the regular. The undergraduate proctor at the time, Kelly Whitaker, was kind, supportive, and had a genuine interest in helping her fellow undergraduate students improve.

Ultimately, these workshops helped me transform my study habits and I turned around my work academically. Seriously, if it were not for Kelly and those workshops I am not sure I would have stuck it out as a science major. Fast-forward to the end of my freshman year and Kelly decided to recommend me to Dr. Wagner for one of the workshop proctor positions for the following year. It was through those workshops and working with Dr. Wagner, Kelly, and many other great undergraduate students that I got my first taste of being an educator and conducting educational research. By my senior year we had actually collected enough data to submit a conference paper on the work to an international science teaching conference. That presentation, focused on the work of undergraduates teaching undergraduates, was my first ever per-reviewed conference paper and is ultimately what launched me into having an interest in pursuing education research later in my career.

Fast forward to last week when I was asked to be part of a project that involves the use of undergraduate teaching assistants as mentors. One of the stated goals of the work is to “support the development of fundamental skills…including study habits”. Hard to believe but at least a portion of the goals associated with this current work will mirror the work we did when I was a senior undergraduate chemistry major.

This brings me to some of the things that need to be considered when thinking about the use of UTAs. The literature on subject has grown some since my initial work. These are some of the key factors (and citations) I have found in my most recent exploration into the topic.

• First and foremost, while some differences in the work conducted between UTAs and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) has been documented (Weidert et al., 2012), the use of UTAs in STEM courses has been shown to be as effective as GTAs across a number of measures including student perceptions and student final course grades (Crowe et al., 2013; Chapin et al., 2014; McCreary et al., 2006).
• Key factors associated with the perceived effectiveness of UTAs in the selection and training process include helpfulness in answering students’ questions, accessibility to students, and qualifications (Filz & Gurung, 2013).
• Despite limited evidence of the effectiveness of requiring high grades (A or B) being related with successful instruction, many programs require UTAs to have earned an A or B in the course for which they wish to teach. Despite this trend, research from Phillipp and Colleagues points out that “content knowledge alone, while certainly necessary, isn’t always sufficient to be a good instructor” (pg. 81, 2016).
• UTAs, much like GTAs, need support to develop the skills necessary to effectively teach. Specifically, “UTAs need both content knowledge support and pedagogical training” in order to develop skills around concepts like “metacognition, formative assessment, and questioning” (Phillip, et al., 2016).
  1. Training can take on a number of different forms including pre-term training, continuous training throughout the term, and peer feedback and support structures during and post training (Filz & Gurung, 2013; Hogan et al. 2007). Further, training can be specific to the content or more general across content areas (Verleger & Velasquez, 2007).
  2. At the center of many of these training programs is an organizing learning theory that drives instructional choice and specific examples of that approach connected with the content to be taught by the UTA (Hogan et al. 2007; Phillip et al., 2016; Wheeler et al., 2015).
• Beyond teaching the assigned recitation section, many programs require UTAs to attend the full class/lecture and a weekly meeting with the lead professor and other UTAs (Weidert et al., 2012) in an attempt to support similar recitation instruction across sections.

I would really like to hear other peoples thoughts on the topic. Feel free to send me an email or reach out on Twitter.

Reference:

Chapin, H. C., Wiggins, B. L., & Martin-Morris, L. E. (2014). Undergraduate science learners show comparable outcomes whether taught by undergraduate or graduate teaching assistants. Journal of College Science Teaching, 44(2), 90-99.

Crowe, J., Ceresola, R., & Silva, T. (2014). Enhancing student learning of research methods through the use of undergraduate teaching assistants. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(6), 759-775.

Hogan, T., Norcross, J., Cannon, T., & Karpiak, C. (2007). Working with and training undergraduates as teaching assistants. Teaching of Psychology, 34, 187–190.

McCreary, C. L., Golde, M. F., & Koeske, R. (2006). Peer Instruction in the General Chemistry Laboratory: Assessment of Student Learning. Journal of Chemical Education, 83(5).

Philipp, S. B., Tretter, T. R., & Rich, C. V. (2016). Development of Undergraduate Teaching Assistants as Effective Instructors in STEM Courses. Journal of College Science Teaching, 45(3), 74.

Verleger, M., & Velasquez, J. (2007, October). An engineering teaching assistant orientation program: Guidelines, reactions, and lessons learned from a one day intensive training program. In Frontiers In Education Conference-Global Engineering: Knowledge Without Borders, Opportunities Without Passports, 2007. FIE’07. 37th Annual (pp. S4G-3). IEEE.

Weidert, J. M., Wendorf, A. R., Gurung, R. A., & Filz, T. (2012). A survey of graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants. College Teaching, 60(3), 95-103.

Wheeler, L. B., Maeng, J. L., & Whitworth, B. A. (2015). Teaching assistants’ perceptions of a training to support an inquiry-based general chemistry laboratory course. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 16(4), 824-842.