Utilizing Teaching Assistants to Increase Active Learning in Lectures

Students learn most effectively while participating in interactive activities, where they construct knowledge with peers in addition to what the instructor provides. Studies show that retrospective post-assessment, where students recall their thinking prior to an activity and compare it to that after the activity, improves students' metacognition and scientific thinking. Many college educators state their desire to adopt such student-centered techniques into their lectures, but unfortunately, lack the support to do so. This work describes a pilot program we called the "Interactive Learning Collaborative" that employs teaching assistants (TAs) as interactive-activity and retrospective-post-assessment designers and facilitators with the help of an experienced-TA mentor. The objectives of the program were to 1) provide engineering TAs an opportunity to practice activity design, 2) improve students' comprehension of the material through peer interaction and reflection in lectures, and 3) introduce instructors to the practice of backward design, active learning techniques, and their positive impact on student perception. In the fall of 2021, TAs met with the mentor weekly or biweekly to design an interactive activity and the subsequent post-activity student reflection questions around a topic that was either critical or historically confusing. The mentor worked with six TAs from four courses to design and execute 13 activities. 70–95% of students stated that their comprehension of the topic improved with peer interaction and reflection. Instructors who were previously inexperienced with student-centered learning mentioned that they felt more confident designing interactive activities and delegating the task to their TAs after this program. The mentor observed that the TAs became more confident and independent, and the quality of their designed activities improved as time went on. Overall, this pilot was beneficial for the students' perception of their learning, course instructors' exposure to active learning strategies, and TAs' confidence in implementing this pedagogy in the classrooms.