2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Motivation

This Complete Theory Paper focuses on the topic of Classroom Strategies. Specifically, it discusses a review of the current literature in engineering education to explore training programs for undergraduate peer teaching assistants (peer-TAs) working in engineering courses. Peer-TAs are expected to play a number of roles supporting students in first-year engineering design active learning classrooms. Depending on the class structure, Peer-TAs can be expected to meet one or many of the following responsibilities: guide students through in-class activities, assist instructors with interventions, enact fair grading and provide useful feedback on assignments, teach topics in a transition-to-college curriculum, monitor team dynamics, and formally or informally empathize with and mentor students. Peer-TAs might be able to rely on their own experiences in the classroom, but learning experiences are not enough to translate to effective teaching and mentoring. Peer-TAs can be employed in courses within their own discipline and in interdisciplinary courses, the latter making the job of the peer-TA more complicated by asking peer-TAs to build a baseline understanding of different disciplines in order to build trust with students with interests outside of their own expertise. These factors make the necessary training for peer-TAs vast, which amplifies our motivation to identify which skills the community identifies as most important to teach. This review addresses two research questions: (1) How are peer-TAs trained to work in engineering classrooms? (2) What skills are most often taught in peer-TA training programs?

Background

The peer-TA program at a large, Midwest public university employs approximately 70-80 undergraduate peer-TAs per semester. The program uses a teach-the-teacher model, where professional faculty and staff model the behaviors and attitudes that are expected of the peer-TAs. This modeling happens in different forms throughout the semester: a semester kickoff centered around team building, weekly in-person meetings to facilitate peer-to-peer check-ins across sections, and online, asynchronous training modules on various topics. When there are special programs for the peer-TAs to facilitate, their training comes in a one-hour intensive walking them through cases of student experiences that they will expect to encounter. Overall, a peer-TA can be expected to spend approximately 30 hours per semester on formal training programs. Training topics for peer-TAs include grading, classroom management and facilitation skills, process-oriented teaching, proper reporting of violations to the student code of conduct, advising styles, wellness-focused mentoring, and conflict resolution. The current program is also constrained by peer-TA’s being available for a single semester per academic year because of a mandatory co-op program. Currently, this constraint is handled by encouraging peer-TA’s to be employed with us for multiple academic years, thus giving the necessary time for reflection and improvement.

Methods

At the recommendation of a Science-Engineering Global Services Librarian, the following databases will be searched: Scopus, Compendex, Academic Search Complete, Education Research Complete, and ERIC. Covidence will be used to aid de-duplication and the screening of articles. The review will begin broadly, likely an umbrella review of existing literature reviews on peer-TA training and development within the broader STEM education community. Inclusion and exclusion criteria will be formulated based on the amount of literature available.

Results

The review will determine the extent/feasibility of a full systematic literature review on peer-TA development. Further, the review will be mapped to the current peer-TA program at the previously mentioned university to identify strengths and weaknesses within the training and overall peer-TA experience. This will ultimately guide future improvements to the training and experience of the peer-TA program, identifying in what ways the effects of training on various peer-TA responsibilities can be maximized within a co-op required engineering program.