Undergraduate Student TAs
Back to All ActionsWhat is the Action?
To use a diverse pool of undergraduate students as teaching assistants (TAs) in computing labs.
Quick Facts to Support this Action
The use of undergraduate students as teaching assistants have been shown to help retention, with particular benefit for retention of female students.
- The presence of peers (which TAs can be seen as) in an undergraduate classroom or lab has been shown to motivate less confident students to ask questions in a male dominated environment.
- Research indicates that students’ relationships with other peer students is more closely associated with their academic achievement that student-lecturer relationships.
- The use of a diverse pool of teaching assistants, in terms of gender and race, has contributed to better female retention.
- 1/3 of student assistants with different major in a New York university declared computer science as their major following their TA experience.
What does the role of a student TA involve?
Undergraduate students support the lecturer/instructor in practical computing labs, but do not replace them. Unresolved questions/confusion are referred to the lecturer/instructor.
Selecting TAs
There are a few options for selecting TAs:
Costs/Efforts Involved
As teaching assistance is an activity that would commonly be remunerated, the following are examples of remuneration options that have been implemented:
Evaluation Approach
To learn about students’ experiences, course assessment feedback surveys have been send out to students of the course. Same study used focus groups for TAs, to get a deeper understanding of how the initiative benefited them as well.
Extract topics for the survey in relation to TAs:
- The TA presented the material in an interesting and engaging way.
- The TA fostered intellectual communication among my peers.
- I felt comfortable asking my TA questions.
- The TA was willing to answer questions.
- The TA was able to answer questions clearly and completely.
- The TA was committed to teaching and aiding students.
- If given the opportunity, I would enroll in a section led by my TA again.
Qualitative, open-ended response:
- Are there distinctive qualities about the TA that you would like to highlight?
- What are one to three specific things that your TA does particularly well to support student learning?
- What might your TA do to improve their teaching?
Next Actions to Consider
Consider using this action along with some others, such as for instance Buddy Systems.
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Best Practices and Sample Questions for Course Evaluation Surveys. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Retrieved: https://assessment.wisc.edu/best-practices-and-sample-questions-for-course-evaluation-surveys/
P. E. Dickson, T. Dragon, and A. Lee. Using Undergraduate Teaching Assistants in Small Classes. In SIGCSE ’17, pages 165–170. ACM, 2017.
E. Dickson. Using undergraduate teaching assistants in a small college environment. In SIGCSE ’11, pages 75–80. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2011.
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Obligations and Expectations for Undergraduate Teaching Assistants – Carnegie Mellon, 2002. https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/resources/PublicationsArchives/UGTA_TAs-v2.pdf
L. D. Thompson, C. Eney, R. Davis, and T. Grady. Recruit and retain women in undergraduate computing: success stories using research-based practices. In SIGCSE ’14, pages 541–542. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2014.
X. Yu, X. Wang, H. Zheng, X. Zhen, M. Shao, H. Wang, and X. Zhou. Academic achievement is more closely associated with student-peer relationships than with student-parent relationships or student-teacher relationships. Frontiers in Psychology, 14:1012701, 2023.