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Reflect on your current or future use of Learning Assistants (LAs) and Teaching Assistants (TAs) in large classes. Consider the following points:

1. How do you currently utilize LAs and TAs in your classes?

2. How do you plan to use LAs and TAs in the future?

3. What strategies do you find most effective for integrating LAs and TAs into your teaching?

4. What challenges have you encountered or anticipate encountering with the use of LAs and TAs in large classes?

5. How do LAs and TAs impact student learning and engagement?

Your reflection should be thoughtful and detailed, demonstrating a clear understanding of the roles of LAs and TAs in large classes and how they can enhance the learning experience.

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I'm somewhat limited in how I can use my TAs. I would love to have them come to class but because of the classes I teach and their obligations, this is very unlikely to happen. I therefore let them grade papers and HW assignments in the background. That way, they help me quite a lot and don't have too much to do given they are still grad students. I have used preceptors who come to class and, above all, take notes as I don't share my lecture slides. They also help with general housekeeping in the course.

In the future, I'm thinking of letting preceptors design some activities or materials, hold office hours, write questions, and maybe have additional review sessions. I haven't done any of that so we'll see. I generally let preceptors and TAs decide if they want to hold office hour or not because attendance is, for my classes, generally nonexistent.

Challenges can arise when the instructional teams get bigger and bigger so that communication and clear assignment of the various roles is essential. Everyone should have an idea of what the other people do and what their role is and who to ask first. Challenges can also come when you are assigned or picked a preceptor or TA who isn't fully understand the material or their duties, which can happen.

I think that preceptors and TAs can have a huge impact and students' learning. Some have taken the class themselves and can give first-hand experience. Others are able to explain things in a non-instructor-explained-thing which is always helpful too.

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Unfortunately, I have not had a qualified TA for any of my courses for the past five years. I work in an academic program that does not have an active graduate degree and cannot use GAs from other colleges. Currently, we are limited to undergraduate TAs and preceptors. My experience with both is that they can help in limited ways in the subject areas I teach because they are transdisciplinary, and our undergrads tend to be discipline-specific.

Where I most need help is with the grading workload. I am in the process of updating some assignments so that they require less knowledge to grade. I cannot do this across courses, but my goal is to reconfigure grading so that discussions and short answer quizzes can be graded by a UTA based on an assignment guide.

When I could get higher GAs from related fields, they were a great plus to my students' learning and development, particularly in business research skills that require one-to-one help. I have only be able to do this when I found grant funding for it. And that requires a lot of effort and work on my part. It is not sustainable for me.

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I am actually not an instructor technically, but work with instructors in our department who teach within our major as well as the general education courses. The way I generally see TAs used is for grading and office hours. However, I think there can be more creative ways to utilizes TAs, and also give them greater and more meaningful experience with teaching.

I will say that when it comes to grading, the instructor and TAs always grade on a rubric. These rubrics do help keep grading consistent, and help the TAs to know what they are looking for when grading.

I think in the future, I would like to see TAs take a bigger role in meeting with students as it relates to the signature assignments in our general education classes. Perhaps we can build this into the beginning of the semester, where students must sign up for a certain amount of "working" sessions. These can happen over Zoom, and can help promote beginning the work on the signature assignment early.

One problem I foresee of course is timing in a large fully online class - some students may be taking the class from across the world, and are free at different times. Perhaps instead of requiring Zoom sessions, we could use another way to communicate in a semi-synchronous way, such as a discussion board that is open for 36 hours. It is still time sensitive, but a little more flexible.

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I feel like I could use my LAs better during class time and in their student support roles. Primarily I have them support the grading workload of my courses, but often don't know exactly how to integrate them into the classroom experience.

I have weekly meetings with my teaching team to make sure we are all on the same page, and that is very helpful. We doing grading calibration throughout the semester to ensure we are using equitable practices across the board.

Some challenges I have come across include that sometimes students will wait to get their question answered by me instead of their LA, which can be tricky especially if the LA does not know the answer to the question. It can also be hard to have groups of LAs in class together, because I've had the experience before where it feels like if too many LAs are in attendance, I feel like I'm managing them as a separate class in the middle of my actual content course (like two classes running at once).

I have always been grateful for LAs who provide students with positive support. They often seem more approachable than instructors, and that is so valuable. I also appreciate that they can share their firsthand experiences with courses and/or undergraduate/career experiences with students. I think it is also powerful to have LAs from diverse populations, as it's important for students in my courses to see that there is room for all in our discipline.

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I have worked with preceptors in collaborative classrooms when I teach CE214 Statics. Statics is not statistics, statics is a fundamental engineering course that combines knowledge of physics and math to do basic structural analysis.

When students are working in groups on solving engineering problems, the preceptors and I float around the room, checking in with groups, answering questions, posing questions, and looking for issues to clarify with the entire class.

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In the large, 1,000 student ACBS 160D course, Teaching Assistants and Graders are absolutely vital to ensure the class functions well. Normally, there is a team of 8-10 TAs and Graders for the course and each are assigned a group of students. The idea is that the teaching team helps to provide individual, one-on-one support to the students and helps to grade the larger course project. Since this project is conducted in stages, members of the teaching team establish a series of weekly office hours with a variety of times to ensure students have opportunities to meet to discuss feedback and address questions they may have. We also have a standing weekly meeting with all of the teaching team. This meeting is dedicated to discussing expectations on grading, office hours, and to address unique student cases. As a part of this, we have several documents shared with the group where TAs and Graders write down special cases, concerns, etc. and we all work together on the documents to provide guidance.

It is pretty apparent that there are a lot of logistical considerations to take in mind with running a large class and I cannot imagine how some of these classes could run without a teaching team. However, managing a large teaching team also comes with its own logistical challenges. Weekly meetings and maintaining shared documents (which we can all edit) has been one of the more effective ways of keeping everyone on the same page. Despite this, on occasion, we have had TAs and Graders that have left mid-semester and that sometimes means others in the group have to take on the extra workload until a replacement is hired or someone's position is adjusted to increase their pay to reflect the increased workload. This can be hugely disruptive in a class where there are already so many moving pieces.

The benefits of having TAs absolutely outweighs the drawbacks. Students receive more individualized attention and feedback by having a designated TA assigned to them and it helps us to ensure students have clear expectations and know where they can go to get help with the course. In turn, it helps to foster engagement.

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I have had TAs for several of the AME classes I have taught over the years. Generally speaking I have utilized the TAs in a variety of roles. In a fair number of cases, I have them help with running tutorial sessions, developing solutions guides for problem sets and for running review sessions. In some cases, I have even had them do limited lectures. Most often, I didn't need to get in-depth organizing TA teams and such as the need was not there. I did, however, expect lines of communication on a weekly basis and for them to have honest conversations, especially when students find challenges interacting with them. I am looking towards more effective ways to organizing the TAs and have them better prepared with the students. -- Jekan

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I teach two connected classes - MIS 111 as an in-person/virtual lecture and MIS 112 as an online applied skills lab. In the fall, we have over 2000 students, but in the spring we only have 1000 students. This creates some challenges in terms of continuity of skills and institutional knowledge. Along with our instructional team, we have a relatively small team of teaching assistants (usually 4-6 in the fall, and 2-3 in the spring - about 400 students per TA), and a large number of preceptors that have previously taken the class as graders (50+ in the fall, about 25 in the spring, or about 40 students per preceptor). Along with this team, we work with the ThinkTank for group/peer-based study sessions.

To manage the dynamic scaling, our approach is to always have a core team of TAs (usually 2-3) that are carry-overs to the next semester, and the experienced TAs train the incoming team. The TA manage operational tasks such as distributing papers to the graders, collating the grading feedback for posting to D2L, and reviewing grade appeals and off-cycle (i.e., late) paper submissions. Faculty create the project assignments, the grading rubrics, training of the graders, and other exceptions to the grading process.

One driver of this process is the university requirement to provide feedback within 2 weeks of submission for 2000 papers (in the fall). Our grading rubric is detailed and objective. This helps with training of the graders and also allows students understand how their papers were assessed. Our team-based grading allows us to provide individual personalized feedback on over 12,000 papers over the course of a semester.

Finally, since graders may know students in the class, we also rotate grading assignments, so that a grader never knows whose paper they will grade, and never sees the same students in their workload across the assignments in the semester. This helps manage bias in grading and ensures a student will not get either an easy or hard grader for all their assignments.

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I struggled getting started or having interest with the third assignment because my events are large, however I do not have LA’s or TA’s. I was also challenged in that I do not lead the events, but the chair of each event leads the presentation. The events are all different because different people run them. However, I do find this is helpfu in how I support them, so for context will describe in more detail. During AY 23-24, I hosted 14 events, one event is repeated (fall, spring), another ran three times (fall, spring, summer). Eight events were online, of which three were asynchronous. Five events were in-person, utilizing both Tucson and Phoenix campuses. There are learning objectives associated with each course that were created by an interprofessional committee, and different active learning opportunities associated with each of them. While we get hundreds of students at several of these events, they all have time to discuss cases in small groups, with guided questions.

Teaching assistants and learning assistants obviously play a crucial role and offer significant benefits to both faculty and students, by providing support for students with more personalized attention, facilitate learning, provide feedback and grading assistance, and enhance classroom dynamics.

2. Roles and Responsibilities

While I do not have LA’s and TA’s available, I do rely heavily on volunteers. I recruit faculty to be panelists, and facilitators at events. A couple years ago I added internships who perform similar tasks to the LA’s and TA’s. Doing so has allowed me to delegate several tasks, and the department tripled the number of events we could offer. The downside is the need to train new interns annually; my department could use another staff. The interns provide support through research assistance, client contact, review content, data management, assistance with grading/attendance and provide post-event feedback. Faculty are recruited to lead events, be panelist, facilitate small groups, keep groups on task, provide support and build connections during events, and provide post-event feedback.

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I used undergraduate preceptors/learning assistants extensively in my large Intro Biology classes. Because I was doing daily in-class problems or case studies, there was no way I could facilitate learning effectively with 300-600 students in the room. Using the preceptors/learning assistants necessitated weekly sessions so they could get advance access to the in-class activities--to make sure they understood the concepts and skills required, and to reflect on places where students were more likely to struggle. They also offered helpful tips to improve the activity. All of this required me to be more organized and prepared, but I don't think that was a bad thing--just painful. ;-)

Challenges arose when I didn't communicate a clear expectation for the LAs: what area of the room each would facilitate; how long I thought students should work before the LAs started checking in with them; and how much time, total, I expected the activity to take. I got better at this, too, over time. Realizing I couldn't monitor the comings and goings of 6-10 people while also managing and using my "biology brain," I began identifying one LA who would take attendance and ensure the other LAs were engaging effectively in each class. I also began using LAs who were very interested in teaching to help me review in-class work and identify patterns of thinking I could use to make day-by-day changes to my teaching.

The benefits of near-peer learning assistants have been dramatic in my classes, even when not so big. Students communicate more openly with them about challenges; the LAs, in turn, are closer to them in their understanding and can relate tips or share empathy about topics/concepts/skills they found challenging. The LAs grow in their content understanding and their ability to communicate with people earlier in their studies, and they also build leadership skills that will help them in whatever area they hope to move into next. Some discover/deepen a love of biology, and some find they enjoy helping people overcome their learning challenges.

I worked with colleagues in Chemistry/Biochemistry and Chemical Engineering (and a large number of instructors in many departments) on an NSF-funded project focused on using an instructional team to support active learning in large STEM classes. Here's our project website, which has training links as well as a description of the different roles we put our learning assistants into to help us manage the complex large-class environment: https://sites.google.com/view/arizonainstructionalteams/home.

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If you are serving on an instructional-team at the University of Arizona, please click here for D2L Self-Registration Instructions for I-TP Training Courses .

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Volunteers & Interns instead of LAs & TAs

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Volunteers & Interns instead of LAs & TAs

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I struggled getting started or having interest with the third assignment because my events are large, however I do not have LA’s or TA’s. I was also challenged in that I do not lead the events, but the chair of each event leads the presentation. The events are all different because different people run them.  However, I do find this is helpfu in how I support them, so for context will describe in more detail. During AY 23-24, I hosted 14 events, one event is repeated (fall, spring), another ran three times  (fall, spring, summer). Eight events were online, of which three were asynchronous. Five events were in-person, utilizing both Tucson and Phoenix campuses. There are learning objectives associated with each course that were created by an interprofessional committee, and different active learning opportunities associated with each of them. While we get hundreds of students at several of these events, they all have time to discuss cases in small groups, with guided questions.

Teaching assistants and learning assistants play a crucial role and offer significant benefits to faculty and students.  While I do not have LA’s and TA’s available, I do rely heavily on volunteers. I recruit faculty to be panelists, and facilitators at events. A couple years ago I added internships who perform similar tasks to the LA’s and TA’s. Doing so has allowed me to delegate several tasks, and the department tripled the number of events we could offer.  The downside is the need to train new interns annually; my department could use another staff.  The interns provide support through research assistance, client contact, review content, data management, assistance with grading/attendance and provide post-event feedback. Faculty are recruited to lead events, be panelist, facilitate small groups, keep groups on task, provide support and build connections during events, and provide post-event feedback.

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I have found using TAs to be extremely helpful for my introduction to circuits class. In the past the class size has been between 30-40 students, and I incorporated a set of demonstrative laboratories. The lab experiences, although very simple, seek to make students familiar with some multimeters, circuits, and energy sources. I found it challenging to do the labs by myself as the students have many questions. The TA helps me with holding the labs on 3 separate days a week. This allowed for smaller groups and a more personalized approach to the experience. Previously to doing the lab experiences, the TA and I meet to review the lab design. Although I designed the experiences based on class learning goals, I pay attention to the TA comments and revise the methods, as they are usually more familiar with what strategies will be more appealing to the students. This experience was evaluated very positively by the students in the class survey, their only concern being about the activity happening outside the class regular hours, which is something I seek to improve next term. In addition, the TA also helps me with grading homework and hosting a workshop on a circuit simulation software I encourage the students to use. This also got a lot of positive feedback from the class.

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I usually meet with the TA at the start of the semester, and define the clear goals and expectations. This helped me a lot.