Purpose: The purpose of the current application paper is to integrate previous literature with recent results from practitioners on effective practices for utilizing small groups in the leadership classroom. Design/methodology/approach: We use these integrated findings to innovate practice on maximizing the role of undergraduate teaching…

As graduate assistants (GAs) at the Graduate Center for the Study of Early Learning at the University of Mississippi, two of the authors participated in a trip to Money, Mississippi, the community where one of the most horrific events related to racial unrest in the country's history occurred. While there, they learned about Emmett Till, a young…

In this conversation essay, the authors incorporate teaching assistants (TAs) into pedagogical theorizing through what they call the teaching triad, an analytic heuristic to understand faculty-TA-undergraduate interactions. TAs are graduate students who are tasked with running discussion sections, smaller settings where undergraduates interact…

This article explores the parallels between improvisational theater, commonly known as improv, and active teaching. Specifically, it focuses in the impact of improv techniques on instructor and teaching assistant professional development. The implementation of an active teaching seminar is analyzed, where improv techniques were used in developing…

Drawing is a teaching tool that provides numerous benefits to student learning, including enhanced knowledge retention, improved observation skills, and increased engagement with course content. However, these exercises also place high cognitive demands on students and require a considerable time commitment. To acknowledge and celebrate the effort…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are key partners in the education of undergraduates. Given the potentially large impact GTAs can have on undergraduate student learning, it is important to provide them with appropriate preparation for teaching. But GTAs are students themselves, and not all of them desire to pursue an academic career. Fully…

At an Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program course in a correctional facility, roughly half the students are from the university (outside students) and half are residents of the facility (inside students). I participated as a teaching assistant in an Inside-Out social work course on drugs and crime that was offered in a prison for men and interpreted…

Many scholars recommend preparing faculty for educator roles. Faculty Learning Communities, The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and teaching centers represent common preparatory approaches. But faculty and teaching assistants report time, disciplinary disconnects, and lack of incentives as ongoing barriers. Inspired by K-12's…

Courses: Instructional Communication, Graduate Teaching Assistant Training Programs. Objectives: Students will (1) understand critical communication pedagogy (CCP); (2) evaluate traditional and critical objectives and assessment procedures; and (3) create critical objectives and assessment procedures.

As part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring 2020 semester, a large-lecture organic POGIL classroom was moved completely online. Normally the course involved daily group work that was facilitated by undergraduate teaching assistants, and these TAs would also assess student process skills such as critical thinking, information…

Individualized instruction of biochemistry has been a promising alternative to large lecture format classes at our institution. The challenge, however, is that individualized instruction courses have larger staff requirements, which can be infeasible under the current scope of educational budget and human resource constraints. In this article, we…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play an essential role in the teaching of introductory chemistry courses at many higher education institutions. On the basis of best practices suggested by the literature, we developed our GTA training course to focus on modeling best practices in the classroom, providing opportunities for incoming GTAs to try…

The initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic changed the nature of course delivery from largely in-person to exclusively remote, thus disrupting the well-established pedagogy of the Genomics Education Partnership (GEP; https://www.thegep.org). However, our web-based research adapted well to the remote learning environment. As usual, students who…

The tutorials of a second-year undergraduate organic chemistry course have been modified to include a retrosynthetic exercise in conjunction with a Molecule of the Week (MoW) challenge. In contrast to the original tutorial assignments in the course, which primarily focused on completing simple reaction roadmaps, the new tutorials place a heavier…

Classroom instructors implementing pedagogical strategies for embodied learning about sexuality and religion need institutional support and assistance from colleagues and mentors to be successful. One means of providing institutional and peer support for classroom instructors is to host and lead a pedagogy workshop. Building on the work of Ott and…