NSF Awards: 1712033
Building Excellence with Scientific Teaching (BEST) is a three-year IUSE project that addresses a critical challenge in undergraduate STEM education by developing highly effective teaching assistants (TAs). This theoretically-grounded program includes an intensive Scientific Teaching training workshop prior to a TA’s first semester in the teaching lab, followed by training modules distributed throughout the semester. Currently in its second year, BEST has trained over 70 undergraduate, and over 30 graduate-level TAs, largely focusing on inclusive teaching in large-enrollment introductory courses. BEST includes a multi-part assessment strategy to determine the degree to which a Scientific Teaching training series leads to increases in (a) undergraduate TA use of evidence-based practice in the teaching lab; (b) undergraduate student acquisition of science-process skills; and (c) TA and student self-efficacy with respect to science ability. Critically, BEST ensures that thousands of students will learn biology via evidence-based practices of active learning, assessment, and inclusivity.
This video provides an introduction to the challenges associated with preparing TAs to facilitate inquiry, the design and implementation of BEST, and evidence for program effectiveness.
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Welcome! Lori Patrick, Hillary Barron, and I (Sehoya Cotner) welcome any thoughts about how best to engage teaching assistants in Scientific Teaching.
Roxane Ronca
Hello
Do you have the modules, syllabuses or other resources that departments could access to reproduce your efforts?
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Hi Roxane, we're working on making everything available. Right now, I can share our Spring training modules (distributed throughout the semester): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12tgtYBB...
Please let me know if you have any questions!
All the best,
Sehoya
Steven McGee
What a great program. It is great that TAs are being exposed to high quality teaching strategies as many of these will also become future professors. It would be great if you could track the longer term impact of the program on the teaching practices of the TAs as they become professors.
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Agreed, and thanks for watching, Steven. One issue is that most of our TAs (70%) are undergraduate students (teaching their own lab sections...they do a great job!), so the goal isn't really to train future professors in that case. However, I do wonder how much this experience shapes their plans for the future...
Ronald Greenberg
Thanks for sharing. It will be great when you have a full set of resources to share for training of traditional TAs, much of which could also be helpful in other contexts. In the work in the video I have co-presented with "TAs" sent to high schools, we make heavy reliance on the students working under close supervision of a classroom teacher.
Sehoya Cotner
Jay Labov
Senior Advisor for Educaition and Communication (Retired
Thank you very much for preparing and submitting this video. The questions posted thus far are very similar to the ones I would have asked you. Based on the name of this program that includes "Scientific Teaching," am I correct in assuming that it is based on some of the premises from the book "Scientific Teaching" by Jo Handelsman et al. at the University of Wisconsin - Madison [can be read online by clicking on the link in this sentence]? I ask this question primarily to make viewers more aware of the insights that are contained in that publication (supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute).
Are you also planning to collect any data about whether the ways that students who are taught by these different groups of TAs differ in any ways? That's the ultimate test of the efficacy of an intervention.
Sehoya Cotner
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Absolutely to both questions. The training was designed around the core principles of Scientific Teaching (ST): inclusivity, active learning, and assessment. But, to be honest, we predominantly emphasize inclusive teaching in the weekly modules that follow our pre-semester ST training.
We are currently drowning in data and thus far have primarily focused on TA behaviors and affect. However, yes!, we definitely plan to look closely at the student experience, and whether it varies as a function of TA training.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Gabriela Weaver
The BEST project sounds extremely applicable for the needs of many STEM departments with large courses and grad students who are assigned to teaching roles. Do you think that some of the insights you will gain about training TA's may be applicable to training faculty? For example, your video notes that the evidence for different teaching practices did not motivate TA's to use these practices. Yet, many educational change agents feel that faculty want to see the "evidence" before they would be willing to use a teaching approach. I'm wondering if your findings can provide some insight into that conundrum.
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
We're wondering the same thing! However, we have a few caveats: one, the majority of our TAs are undergraduate students who have gone to our institution, where active learning and assessment (if not always inclusive teaching) are pretty standard. Maybe that level of exposure has made them so accepting of evidence-based pedagogy that convincing them of its evidentiary basis is not necessary.
Also, we find that as the TAs progress, their interest in pedagogy changes. Perhaps not surprisingly, during the first semester of teaching, they are concerned about the mechanics of leading a lab section, but in following semesters they start to express concerns about managing group dynamics, being more inclusive, effectively facilitating inquiry, etc. Maybe it's the same with faculty. Perhaps programs that highlight nuanced pedagogical approaches will be best received by faculty with a semester or several under their belt.
Regardless, it's a testable hypothesis! Thanks for watching and commenting, Gabriela.
Ivory Toldson
President and CEO
Hello All! My name is Ivory Toldson, professor at Howard University, president of Quality Education for Minorities, and one of the facilitators for the STEM for All Video Showcase. The conversation is off to a great start and I will be chiming in with my own input this afternoon and over the next few days. I'm excited about what we can achieve for the next generation of STEM learners!
Sehoya Cotner
Ivory Toldson
President and CEO
I think that this topic is very important. Teaching Assistants play a critical role in the classroom and perform better when they are more prepared. Gaining these insights should allow for just that. I would assume that the understanding of what best assist TA's with learning evidence-based teaching practices is not only beneficial for the TA but also the students that they interact with. Have you been able to measure any subsequent effects of student performance? Is that something that you are interested in for future directions?
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Ivory, we are definitely interested in that question, and are exploring student performance and affect (self-efficacy, project ownership of the lab-based research projects, performance, impressions of the TA, etc.). Statistically, it's difficult because we can't treat each student as an individual, really, so once we employ a nested hierarchy any differences b/t the TA get muddy. However, we are trying to disentangle the student experience between the different types of lab sections, based on TA training in ST. I'd love any advice on how best to do this!
Thanks for the input.
Judith Dilts
Professor Emerita of Biology and Retired Associate Dean, College of Science and Mathematics
This is a great program -- that TA's know what to do is often just assumed so providing training is excellent. Also, the evidence-based approach and inclusive teaching focus is very important. I was wondering a couple of things: 1. Are all TA's automatically in the program or is there a selection process? Are faculty consulted about having their TA's involved? 2. Is there a workshop to help faculty understand the training their TA's will receive? Is there any interaction between the faculty and TA around this program? Do you encounter a disconnect between the way a faculty member would like the TA to teach and what you all are recommending?
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Judith, such great questions!
1. All TAs in our introductory series (~100) are encouraged to participate, and TAs in our non-majors sequence (~50) are required to participate. There are several reasons for this, chief among them the fact that our non-majors TAs are the ones that have the most autonomy, and are the primary instructors for each lab section. Many of the faculty in the non-majors courses are not very involved in the lab, and those that are involved in the lab curriculum are also involved in BEST. We got department-level buy-in when we were requesting funding from NSF, but sometimes we do have to remind people of this...
2. We've not done a workshop for faculty, and suspect that for some of the faculty (those uninvolved in the lab), the suggestion to do so would be met with reluctance.
Sometimes we do encounter a disconnect between the teaching practices of the faculty member of record (e.g., predominantly lecturing and summative assessment in lecture) and those we are trying to cultivate in our TAs. However, we've not experienced push-back from the faculty members.
Thanks for watching and commenting.
Molly Phillips
I think the focus on science teaching assistants is really great. Not only are you potentially improving student experience, but also influencing graduate students at a crucial time in the professional development. Do you have any plans to follow the careers of the participating TAs to measure possible impacts as a result of their training experience? Thanks so much for sharing your work.
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Molly, thanks for the feedback. This week, and feedback on this forum, has certainly clarified that we need to think seriously about longitudinal assessment of the program. At a minimum, we can ask TAs--in the program and not--how likely they are to pursue teaching opportunities in the future! Most of our TAs are undergraduate students, so we can't make the same assumptions as we would if they were grad students (i.e., that they might be considering faculty positions).
Thanks for watching and commenting.
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Molly, thanks for the feedback. This week, and feedback on this forum, has certainly clarified that we need to think seriously about longitudinal assessment of the program. At a minimum, we can ask TAs--in the program and not--how likely they are to pursue teaching opportunities in the future! Most of our TAs are undergraduate students, so we can't make the same assumptions as we would if they were grad students (i.e., that they might be considering faculty positions).
Thanks for watching and commenting.
Sehoya Cotner
Associate Professor
Molly, thanks for the feedback. This week, and feedback on this forum, has certainly clarified that we need to think seriously about longitudinal assessment of the program. At a minimum, we can ask TAs--in the program and not--how likely they are to pursue teaching opportunities in the future! Most of our TAs are undergraduate students, so we can't make the same assumptions as we would if they were grad students (i.e., that they might be considering faculty positions).
Thanks for watching and commenting.
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.