Graduate Teaching Assistant Training Program at the University of Arizona

Abstract

The art of effective teaching requires guidance, practice and feedback. The 2000+ undergraduates who enroll in our introductory Human Anatomy and Physiology (PSIO 201/202) courses each year deserve an optimal educational experience; similarly, the Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) who teach the associated labs deserve the professional training to optimize their teaching and presenting skills to further their careers. At University of Arizona, we have developed a three‐pronged approach to enable success in both. 1) The Physiological Sciences Teaching Workshop (PS 697A&B) is a year‐long course designed to help new GTA’s develop and fine tune their teaching techniques by focusing on ‘best practices’ through guest lectures, peer observations and group discussion. This prong emphasizes the development of a teaching philosophy, provides helpful ideas for engaging students and creating an active learning environment in the lab, and provides training in professional skills related to presenting and communicating. 2) Weekly content‐based sessions led by the 201/202 course instructors and lab coordinators focusing on the course‐specific material and experiments to be covered in the upcoming week’s lab, with additional insights and handy hints provided from seasoned TA’s. During these 2–3 hour meetings, GTAs receive lab outlines (prep notes), template slides, perform dissections and experiments, and review slides and anatomical models. They also have the opportunity to give feedback on the previous week’s lab and ask questions about the upcoming lab, enabling continuous fine‐tuning of the labs used each year. Both the Teaching Workshop and the 201 or 202‐Specific Preparation begins each fall with an intensive orientation the week prior to the semester to insure the teaching team is well‐versed with university and department policies and resources, course specific policies and problem solving and are certified in CPR and First Aid. The TW and weekly preparation meetings complement each other to provide a well‐rounded training program for the GTAs fully preparing them to meet the demands of teaching 2 labs of 25–30 students each about the intricacies of the human body. 3) The 3rd prong is the Physiology Forum, a bimonthly seminar series, now in its 10th year, which hosts research presentations required of all our Physiological Sciences graduate students (MS and PhD candidates). Each student presentation is provided with post‐hoc critiques from the full cohort of graduate students and 2 faculty selected on a 2 year rotating basis, resulting in remarkably high quality presentations across the board. Each of these 3 venues provide preparation with respect to content and format, presentation skills and formative feedback. Using student teaching evaluations for the labs, analyses by TA’s on the benefits of the Prep and Workshop sessions, and comments from intra‐ and extramural faculty where our students have presented their work suggests that this combination of hands‐on practice paired with constructive feedback has served our graduate students well as they proceed onto the next steps in their professional careers. Here, we describe the implementation of the specific activities, goals, and learning outcomes that drove the design of our GTA training program.