Presentation
Teaching practices of graduate teaching assistants
Physics Education Research Conference
(2015)
Abstract
Physics education research has consistently shown that students have higher student learning outcomes when enrolled in interactive-engagement courses. At San José State University, the interactive sections (labs and workshops) of our introductory physics courses are mostly taught by graduate student teaching assistants (TAs). While some research has been done to determine how best to prepare TAs for their teaching assignments, remarkably little has been done to monitor how interactive that classroom time actually is. Over the course of one semester, we observed the majority of the TAs in their teaching roles: both as laboratory instructors and problem-solving "workshop" leaders. Observations were conducted for the first hour of instruction using the Real-time Instructor Observation Tool (RIOT), logging a variety of TA-student interactions in real time. We present the results from over 20 observation hours of these interactions and compare these data with known best practices.
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer 2015
Location
College Park, MA
Citation Information
E. Hickok and Cassandra Paul. "Teaching practices of graduate teaching assistants" Physics Education Research Conference (2015) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/cassandra-paul/38/