Dee Fink

Program Description

The general purpose of this program is to prepare Graduate Teaching Assistants for their responsibilities as members of the teaching faculty at this university. The program is offered in mid-August, a week or so before the beginning of fall semester classes, and consists of two parts. In PART I, participants attend a one-day program and attend four sessions (one and a half hours each) in which they learn about ideas on teaching. For example, active learning, course design, grading and assessing student learning, making lectures interesting. In PART II, they attend four additional sessions (one and a half hours each) on some basic skills involved in TA teaching: lecturing, leading discussions (two sessions), and handling classroom problems. TAs spend two full days in this program, usually one and a half weeks before the start of classes in the fall.

Program Outcomes

Approximately three hundred TAs attend this program each year; approximately one-third of these are STEM graduate students. Generally the participants are beginning graduate students. Although, we do not have data on how this program changes the participants' teaching, we have done evaluations on the program itself. The participants say it relieves their anxiety about teaching for the first time (which is the case for most of them) and provides them with specific ideas to use in their teaching. The participants also appreciate knowing that there are resources and services available should they need to ask additional questions when they are actually teaching.

This program definitely helps prepare our TAs for their initial teaching experience. This is important because TAs are responsible for teaching a large portion of our lower-division courses. We have also found an interesting impact on faculty . We often invite faculty who have received teaching awards to lead sessions in the program. They frequently report how much they enjoy sharing their knowledge about teaching and helping graduate students in learning about teaching. One major public relations benefit for any university with a large number of TAs is that it allows the university to document the substantial preparatory training these students receive before entering the classroom.

The impact of this program is significant because TAs teach a major portion of the lower division classes at our university. We have approximately 900 TAs teaching two classes a semester and 900 tenure/tenure-track faculty teaching two classes a semester.

Program Implementation

This program costs approximately $5,000 per year. Most of the administrative time spent coordinating the program occurs in August, especially during the few days before classes start. It involves a significant number of faculty and senior graduate teaching assistants who conduct the workshops.

This university-sponsored program is basically a two-day crash course on teaching. Individual departments with a large number of TA's do and should supplement this program with a department specific training program.