With the growth in engineering enrollments, faculty members may find themselves in relatively large classes where they may feel the need for extra teaching assistants, may desire methods and resources to provide more individualized or small group student contact time, and may want to employ more modern teaching methodologies to improve student…

Miscommunication between instructors and students is a significant obstacle to post-secondary learning. Students may skip office hours due to insecurities or scheduling conflicts, which can lead to missed opportunities for questions. To support self-paced learning and encourage creative thinking skills, academic institutions must redefine their…

The primary purpose of this study is to validate a student engagement measure for its use in evaluation of a learning assistant (LA) program. A series of psychometric evaluations were made for both the original scale of Higher Education Student Engagement Scale (HESES) and its adapted version designed to be used in gauging the effectiveness of…

The National Science Foundation identified a shortage of STEM professionals in the United States. There is a dire need to promote STEM education to secure high-paying and skilled jobs for the country's residents and the overall healthy economy. This shortage is partly due to students' low retention and persistence to graduate in STEM fields. Due…

Social robots have the potential to play a vital role in education. Student technology acceptance may be considered as a driver for their successful integration in educational processes. Based on the ICAP (Interactive, Constructive, Active, Passive) framework and research on social robot roles, we have developed eight vignettes describing…

Background: Learning assistants (LAs) increase accessibility to instructor-student interactions in large STEM lecture classes. In this research, we used the Formative Assessment Enactment Model developed for K-12 science teachers to characterize LA facilitation practices. The Formative Assessment Enactment Model describes instructor actions as…

Professional identity development of students is an often discussed but never resolved issue in higher education. To facilitate a shift toward developing students' professional identity, we propose a pedagogical model where students are tasked with developing and providing instruction to their classmates during a 75-minute teaching session.…

Students with disabilities are entering higher education at increased rates (National Center Educational Statistics, 2016). The aim of this study was to investigate graduate teaching assistants' knowledge, attitudes, and professional development needs regarding students with disabilities in higher education. A modification of Sniatecki's (2015)…

Instructors often encounter challenges in the implementation of evidence-based teaching practices in large-enrollment STEM courses. A novel Instructional-Teams Model (I-TM) seeks to address some of these challenges with the support of student assistants in specialized roles. I-TM roles focus on supporting course and classroom management…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Biology Teaching Assistants (TAs) were tasked with transitioning and adapting their instruction to an online environment by quickly implementing Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) practices. Effective online and in-person teaching requires student-centered approaches to support undergraduate student learning. Using…

This multiple-article dissertation explores institutional support for student academic engagement through the lens of the Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE) framework. A literature synthesis explores the current research on teaching assistant (TA) support in online and blended environments in higher education, with a special emphasis on…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] This paper presents a historical analysis of the development, implementation, research, and assessment of an evidence-based introductory algebra-based physics course. The course is laboratory based and taught with an inquiry-based…

In this study, I examined the ways in which teachers' facilitation techniques are associated with students' mathematical thinking. The teachers' beliefs and students' perception about mathematics discussions were also examined in order to determine whether or not the connection of the teachers' facilitation techniques with students' thinking were…

In this research, we explore the effect of college instructors' use of formal versus casual titles on student perceptions as a function of the instructors' academic ranks. We conducted two studies: the first surveying students to study their expectations and preferences of formality and rank, and the second using experimental manipulations of…

Maybe you're an undergraduate or graduate student who's just been appointed a TA. Or maybe you're a postdoctoral student or a new hire with limited teaching experience. In either case, you'll be expected -- with little to no training -- to enhance the learning experience of students. Kathy Nomme and Carol Pollock recognize this gap between…