2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Working effectively with your teaching team: Tips and Tricks from Laboratory and Design Course Instructors

Presented at New Engineering Educators (NEE) Technical Session 3 - Professional and Faculty Development

Practical considerations of teaching often call for the use of instructional teams that work under the supervision of a course director to teach, grade, and otherwise support the success of a class and its students. When members of a teaching team are motivated, have good instincts about teaching and learning, and have the requisite background knowledge for the course, little explicit leadership is required. However, the realities of course staffing are that members of teaching teams are heterogeneous in their experience, background, and motivation. This kind of diversity can lead to many different challenges for course directors. It also offers opportunities for course directors to step up as leaders of their teams.

Our community of engineering laboratory and design course instructors have found that challenges with teaching teams is a recurring theme in both formal and informal conversations. Both new and experienced course directors bring different challenges forward and exchange ideas for how to address those challenges. Questions that have come up include what to do when a graduate student teaching assistant is not motivated to fulfill the expectations of their teaching role, how to onboard teaching staff to the technical knowledge needed to assist students in a laboratory activity, and how to use limited preparation time to get a whole team “on the same page.”

In this tips and tricks paper, we will summarize the themes and knowledge gained from these discussions so that others may benefit from our community’s work. We focus on effective team leadership methods across different laboratory and design course contexts that involve the use of graduate students and/or undergraduate students to teach and to support classroom activities. Themes that reach across these different contexts include (1) establishing expectations and leadership, (2) supporting professional development, and (3) facilitating teaching community.

Authors

Katherine Ansell University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Katie Ansell is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her teaching and research activities focus on the practical and social aspects of the classroom that contribute to the development of student expertise in Introductory Physics Laboratories.
Dr. Jessica R TerBush http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8438-7411 University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Jessica received her B.S.E, M.S.E., and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After graduation, she worked as a post-doc for approximately three years at Monash University in Clayton, Victoria, Australia. She then spent three years working as a Senior Research Specialist at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri, where she trained users on the focused ion beam (FIB), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and transmission electron microscope (TEM). In 2016, she moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to serve as a lecturer in the department of Materials Science and Engineering. Here, she is responsible for teaching the junior labs as well as providing instruction on writing in engineering.
Dr. Caroline Cvetkovic http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3035-7313 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Caroline Cvetkovic is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she instructs courses in quantitative physiology, biofabrication, and heat transfer. She earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Center for Neuroregeneration and Department of Neurosurgery at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
Elaine C. Schulte University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Dr. Christopher D. Schmitz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9673-9832 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Christopher D. Schmitz received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois in 2002.
Chandrasekhar Radhakrishnan
Dr. Rebecca Marie Reck http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5894-4130 University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Rebecca M. Reck is a Teaching Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research includes alternative grading, entrepreneurial mindset, instructional laboratories, and equity-focused teaching. She teaches biomedical instrumentation, signal processing, and control systems. She earned a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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