How can TA Meetings Effectively Prepare TA Instruction?

A General Chemistry course consists of multiple components, amongst these are recitation and office hour sections. These sections are centered on enhancing students’ conceptual understanding and honing their problem-solving skills. Even without the current realization of online teaching, these objectives require a skillful synthesis of technical and pedagogical planning. The goal of this project was to examine how teaching assistant (TA) meetings can effectively prepare TA instruction in General Chemistry discussion sections with inclusive practices, considering an online teaching environment. Firstly, the challenging areas of virtual TA instruction were probed. Subsequently, five quarterly objectives for the TA meetings were determined related to the pedagogical and learning needs TAs’ reported. Accordingly, biweekly presentations serving the quarterly objectives were developed, containing pedagogical strategies and resources to aid TAs’ preparation for effective and inclusive instruction. Following the biweekly presentations, TAs’ completed a reflection journal based on a survey format, where overall 4 journal entries were requested. The TA reflection journal inquired if TAs accomplished the learning objectives of the biweekly presentation, as well as it included space for TAs to generate prompts and questions for the next presentation. Importantly, the TA reflection journal incorporated demographic information of TAs, where no corresponding demographics of graduate students had been collected in our Chemistry department prior. Altogether, utilizing the collaborative and informative nature of the TA meetings to the highest extent, serves as a vehicle for the pedagogical development of TAs to make effective instructional decisions that result in enhancing student learning.