Hello,
We are again going into another semester with unknowns and challenges. One challenge that I face is providing the best possible experience for my teaching assistants and hope that others want to share their experiences, especially in introductory biology and chemistry courses. I am emailing to invite you to participate in a study that will investigate teaching assistants in introductory biology and chemistry courses during the COIVD-19 pandemic when faced with different delivery methods during the fall semester. The results from this study will help pinpoint areas throughout these courses that we can improve for teaching assistants and our training programs throughout future semesters in order to determine the best practices to help teaching assistants feel more comfortable delivering content in different methods. If you decide to participate in the study, you will gain access to the preliminary results throughout the semester and post-semester once all results are analyzed.
The study will be a two-part study collecting data from instructors, faculty and laboratory coordinators that work with teaching assistants in introductory biology and chemistry to understand how teaching assistants’ training, responsibilities and TA shortages are being handled as we move forward. The questions will consist of multiple choice and open-ended questions for the instructors, faculty members or lab coordinators to fill out. The second part will involve data collection from the teaching assistants about their self-efficacy for learning environment and instructional methods through a Likert scale survey, and some open-ended reflection questions about their comfort level teaching and training from both past and present experiences. We have both pre- and post-semester surveys that will be completed. These surveys should each take approximately 15 to 20 minutes to complete.
This study has been approved by the University of Delaware IRB office, and the study will limit the amount of identifiable information collected on the teaching assistants, and the course. All responses will be combined and no individual responses will be used when reporting the results.
If you would like to participate or have any questions please email Deborah A. Lichti, Ph.D. preceptor at the University of Delaware at dalichti@udel.edu.
Thank you for your time and consideration!
Deborah Lichti