2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work-in-progress research paper is part of the first phase of a project with an action research approach that seeks to integrate the needs, interests, and motivations of engineering undergraduate peer teaching assistants (PTAs) into evidence-based pedagogy training to co-create new training content that serves this PTA community directly. Pedagogical training is essential to maximizing the effectiveness of PTAs in their interactions with students. Much of the content and activities of such training are evidence-based, and literature on training programs, particularly in engineering education, typically report TAs’ opinions and anecdotal feedback as assessment, but only after the program is fully developed and run. Further, many PTAs will not continue in a career in academia; therefore, their motivation to fully engage with pedagogy training is mostly intrinsic, which might suggest a need for explicit connections between pedagogical and professional skills. A TA training program hosted at a large US Midwest university is beginning this project to better align evidence-based TA training with the motivations of the PTAs in the program. In the Fall 2025 semester, an open-ended early-semester feedback survey was co-created by the TA training program manager, a TA professional development researcher, the faculty course coordinator for the first-year engineering design thinking course in which the PTAs work, and the student coordinators (Lead TAs) of the PTA team. This survey was distributed to the current PTA team, which consists of 59 PTAs, 35 of whom responded. This paper will discuss the responses gathered from the first portion of the survey, which sought to answer the following research questions: (1) How do undergraduate peer teaching assistants (PTAs) describe their job responsibilities? (2) What do PTAs find valuable in a TA Training Program to complete these responsibilities? Using an inductive thematic analysis approach, open and axial coding of these responses led to finding actions or jobs that PTAs define as within their job responsibilities and to see what and how PTAs are naming as valuable lessons or training experiences. These codes serve as preliminary findings for a codebook to be co-created with Lead TAs that will guide future research and action for program modification and evaluation. Lightning round tables are the preferred presentation environment as this will allow the authors to actively engage with other researchers working in TA and faculty development and co-create knowledge to inform pedagogical training practices in engineering.