2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The well-being teaching assistant (WTA) program is an intervention implemented since 2021 by a large and selective school of engineering in Latin America, in response to an increasing need to assist students facing academic and personal difficulties. WTAs are members of the teaching staff whose main tasks are (1) to actively initiate communication with students who are at risk of failing the course, (2) to identify issues with the students (3) to take action according to the type of issue that the student is facing, (4) to follow up cases, until resolution. A student followup software (SFS) is used by the WTAs to track and follow up each contacted student. The SFS also allows recording the time, length and type of each case. In previous publications, we have shown that WTAs are positively evaluated by students and we have analyzed the type of interactions between WTAs and students. In this paper, we consider a new question: what are the conditions that determine the need for a WTA in a specific course?. We present progress towards answering this question from the analysis of a questionnaire responded by students who had a WTA in 2024. In addition, we present the qualitative analysis of focus-group interviews with WTAs. The findings revealed a typology of courses that benefit from having a WTA. These courses are characterized as challenging, either due to their content or methodology, limited interaction with faculty, reduced accessibility or connection with students, by having a high enrolment or by being first-year courses that pose challenges related to adapting to university life. Courses with a diverse student population or at the final year of studies, which involve greater administrative needs, were also regarded as benefiting highly from having a WTAs. The study concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings for the program and for future research.