2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

WIP: Evaluation of the Third Design Cycle of the Wellbeing Teaching Assistant (WTA): Understanding What Type of Cases are Served Through a Categorization Analysis

Presented at Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM) Technical Session 9

Well-being is increasingly recognized as a key element to foster within higher education. In this context, our institution—a prominent engineering school in Latin America—has created the Well-being Teaching Assistant (WTA). The WTA is a member of the teaching staff who proactively contacts and follows up students struggling academically, using empathetic communication, and proposing flexibility actions when possible, without sacrificing the achievement of learning objectives. The implementation of the WTA has followed a multi-cycle design-based research approach.

In this work-in-progress paper, we report an evaluation of the third design cycle carried out during 2023, in which WTAs were incorporated into 52 courses. Specifically, our evaluation accounts for the analysis of cases reported by WTAs using a tracking software. Tracking allows cases to be classified according to labels that indicate the area of the requests addressed, such as academic aspects, mental health, and administrative requests, all from the point of view of students from different Engineering courses.

The systematic classification of cases is a new implementation that has been carried out during the last two academic semesters. This allows us to more effectively investigate the main problems of students and how to provide timely follow-up. The latter has been carried out in a pilot mode during the first semester of 2023 and systematically in the second semester of 2023 through a virtual platform.

Students served by WTAs have positively evaluated its implementation. We also discuss aspects related to the involvement of instructors whose engagement seems key to the success of the intervention. The overall interest of instructors in incorporating WTAs into courses has also increased, and we report on these data too.

Authors

Mr. Erick Vaclav Svec http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9263-6094 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [biography]

Erick is a project manager at the Engineer Education Unit and the Research and Innovation Unit at the School of Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Erick received his Master's Degree in Engineering Science with a focus on Computer Vision from PUC-Chile.
Gabriel Astudillo Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [biography]

Gabriel Astudillo is Measurement and Evaluation Coordinator at the Engineering School in Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC-Chile). Gabriel received an MA in Social Sciences from Universidad de Chile and is Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Mr. Luis Eduardo Vargas-Vidal Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [biography]

Luis Eduardo Vargas-Vidal is the for Teaching Development Coordinator at the Engineering School of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC-Chile). He is also a Spanish and Communication Professor at PUCV-Chile and obtained his master's degree in Curriculum Development and Educational Projects from UNAB-Chile.
Carolina López Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [biography]

Carolina López is the Continuous Quality Improvement Coordinator at Pontificia Universidad Catolica ´
de Chile (PUC-Chile) at the Engineering School in Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (PUC-Chile). Carolina received an MA in Social Sciences from the Universidad de Chile.
Mrs. Ximena Hidalgo [biography]

Psychologist, faculty development coordinator, Division of Engineering Education. School of engineering of Pontificia Universidad CatÃ³lica de Chile.
Miss Isabel Hilliger http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5270-7655 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [biography]

Isabel Hilliger is Assistant Professor of Practice and Associate Director for Assessment and Evaluation at the Engineering Education Unit in Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC-Chile). Isabel received a BEng and PhD in Engineering Sciences from PUC-Chile, and an MA in Policy Organizati
Dr. Jorge A. Baier Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [biography]

He is an associate professor in the Computer Science Department and Associate Dean for Engineering Education at the Engineering School in Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. Jorge holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto.

Download paper (1.87 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session