Work in Progress: Engineering Student Instructors, What Are Their Needs and How Can We Best Prepare Them?

摘要

Graduate student instructors (GSIs) are not only essential to the instructional team at many research institutions, but their teaching appointments are often the only teaching experiences they have prior to becoming faculty. Moreover, GSIs have been found to play an important role in improving student retention and inclusion in science, technology, engineering and math fields (STEM). Undergraduate instructional aids (IAs) have also been found to benefit student learning, and their training is fundamental to that success. As a result, calls have been made to develop and improve the professional development of student instructors. Trainings at different institutions range from two-hour departmental orientations with no formal teaching training to year-long pedagogy courses. Unfortunately, the longer offerings are often optional and not well attended due primarily to time constraints, viewing teacher development as low priority, and scheduling conflicts. Strategic improvements to student-instructor training depend largely upon appropriate assessment of the program. This work in progress paper describes a needs assessment of the teaching professional development for IAs and GSIs in engineering, especially as it relates to diversity and inclusion. To our knowledge, training STEM student instructors in inclusive teaching is still at its infancy, and few studies in the literature exist in this area.