Designing Learning Supports for Online Teaching Assistants
Concurrent Session 8
Brief Abstract
Building the capacity of teaching assistants gives them the means to support learners as well as helps them to become better learners too. This paper describes design and implementation of a training module for TA’s and the design decisions made to address the needs of the university and its students.
Presenters
Extended Abstract
Introduction
Within formal education, learners typically interact with content, instructors, teaching assistants, and peers (Moore, 1989). These interactions provide a means for learners to increase in their content knowledge. Fostering lifelong learning and 21st century skills in online courses is important in education today as more classes are online, and technologies and job expectations change. . To foster these skills, they must be taught in the course (Saavedra & Opfer, 2012). Instructors and teaching assistants need to be prepared to teach these skills and provide resources related to them for learners. Providing training and support for instructors and teaching assistants is very important for student success. Building the capacity of teaching assistants gives them the means to support learners as well as helps them to become better learners too (Shannon et al., 1998). This presentation will describe the process and decisions in developing the Teaching Assistant Module (TAM) for online teaching assistants to support learners.
Context
This design case is part of a larger Research-Practice Partnership (Penuel & Gallagher, 2017) with administrators, design professionals, and educational researchers at a large, private university in the western United States. Since one of the main aims of this university is to foster lifelong learning skills, this work focuses on building these skills as well as learner readiness in online courses. This involves multiple people and design, including instructional designers, teaching assistants (TAs), instructors, resources, well designed courses, and preparation and training for people who implement the courses. This paper focuses on the teaching assistants.
The TAM was designed to help solve a number of problems identified by the university’s online administrators. The most pressing problems arose from rapid growth with limited staff. Previous TA training was primarily focused on employment policies and procedures, with some learning management system (LMS) training. To begin the design of the new training, the existing online training resources were assessed for how necessary or pertinent the information was moving forward, with the majority of the materials being removed and not used. The need to improve TA interventions led us to focus on a new training course that could teach both student success strategies and pedagogical principles in the hopes to improve teaching assistant effectiveness.
Theoretical framework
The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM; Anderson, 1997) provides the theoretical framework for the design and implementation of the TAM. The CBAM functions under the premise that the adoption of new programs and initiatives are much more than materials and resources. Assessment of successful implementation must also address the attitudes and beliefs of all who will be involved and how they will respond to the changes.
Research methodology and design process
This partnership uses design-based research (McKenney & Reeves, 2018) to iteratively tackle problems of practice faced in online learning. As an exploratory study, we used surveys and reflections to capture the experiences, perceptions, and attitudes of the TAs related to the TAM and their classes. Data was collected over three semesters and analyzed so iterative improvements in the design, development, and implementation process could be made. This work is guided by the following research question: How effective is the TAM in building knowledge and capacity for TAs?
Design
With rapid TA growth and limited resources, we recognized a need to provide TAs with a more comprehensive learning opportunity that could be done completely asynchronously online and double as a resource and reference manual. The overarching goal of this new training module was to provide TAs with instruction on how to fulfill their job duties, how to connect with their students online and help them in their efforts to become better online and lifelong learners, student success strategies, and pedagogical principles in the hopes to improve teaching assistant effectiveness.
The TAM was created through a collaborative design process with stakeholders, designers, and researchers. The first unit focused on improving knowledge of the Canvas LMS. The LMS used in online courses was different from the LMS used in in-person sections, so LMS proficiency was an important goal in this first unit. The goal of this unit is for TAs to know Canvas and to be the main source of support to their students who are new to the LMS. This unit is to be completed before the semester begins. Unit 1 aligns with the first and second stages of concern in CBAM, informational and personal. They are learning about the LMS and becoming comfortable with it, while building their confidence with the technology.
Unit 2 was created to help TAs connect with their students. Designed to be completed in the first few weeks of the semester, the unit focuses on providing timely feedback to students, creating a community of belonging through inclusion and safety, using course analytics to support online students and accommodating various needs of students. The major objectives of unit 2 included helping TAs to see the why of what they are doing; to act as students’ success mentors and have the skills to improve student learning. This unit teaches them how to identify struggling students using data analytics and provides ways to offer support and encouragement. Teaching assistants are usually chosen because of their academic performance, but we did not want to make the assumption that they possessed any knowledge of or experience with utilizing effective learning strategies. So, this unit pushed for information as well as how what they learn might affect them and their student’s learning opportunities.
The goal of Unit 3 was to provide personal growth and professional development opportunities for the TAs with the hope that the outcomes and benefits would be passed to the students they interact with. To navigate this, we chose to provide several options to help TAs recognize their own strengths (and weaknesses) and learn how to improve on them. In line with the CBAM model, we hoped that these training sessions would help TAs to experience the importance of the material that we covered. Once they had a meaningful experience themselves, they could turn to their students, recognize their needs and help them. We acted under the assumption that if we could help TAs to become more capable and conscious students themselves, there would be some benefit that would trickle down to the students they are responsible for. In Unit 3 we ask TAs to choose their own adventure with the following topics: Happiness Advantage Bookclub, Growth Mindset, Mental Health, Active Learning, Critical Writing, Gallup CliftonStrengths, and Belonging. The format of this unit allows TAs to self-direct their training material to meet individualized growth while still maintaining training effectiveness. This design also allows returning TAs to have continued meaningful learning when they return in multiple semesters. The Unit 3 training has been the most well received unit. The most popular training chosen by TAs has been the mental health module. Working with professionals within the campus counseling center we created this unit to educate the TAs about the importance of mental health within the learning process. Survey data to evaluate this unit reports promising results about the effectiveness of the materials and movement in the right directions toward our learning outcomes for this unit (see Figure 1). TAs also have the option to earn a microcredential for each of the topics in Unit 3.
One more problem addressed in our training was the lack of transfer of knowledge from one semester to another. Student positions have a high turnover rate. TAs interact with a course at a different level than instructors and can provide valuable insight into course design improvements as well as assignment management and support. We value the knowledge and experience the TAs gain and have seen it often go unnoticed. We created unit 4 to capture what was learned every semester to shorten the learning curve for the next TA. This final unit is essential to helping the online department maintain and improve their courses as TAs learn how to communicate and collaborate with the designers regarding issues in the course so that the university’s online education can continuously improve. This wasn’t part of the design when unit 1 was started, but it became apparent that a need for refocusing, as CBAM states, was needed each semester. At the end of this unit, the TAs complete a post-semester reflection survey similar to the pre-semester survey they take and aims to measure student learning through the semester and training effectiveness.
Results and discussion
Using the results from the pre/post survey to answer our research question, we are optimistic as we see evidence of the training's effectiveness. Results to four questions from the surveys report that the TAs find the TAM effective in helping them with grading and feedback, improving student success, interacting with students, and their perceptions of affecting student learning and success.
Implications
At this university there is a lack of campus standard training for teaching assistants. Many entities outside of the online department have expressed an interest in creating something that would work for all TAs. It is the online department’s goal to improve peer teaching and support across disciplines by creating a version of the teacher assistant training that could be easily customizable to meet a department's needs. With data supporting the effectiveness of the TAM, this service could be beneficial for other departments.