ATLAS - ACADEMIC TEACHING AND LEARNING ASSISTANTS STUDY: THE USE OF PEERS AS 'QUALITY MANAGERS' IN ENGINEERING CLASS INSTRUCTION

摘要

In recent years, teacher/student ratios (TSR) have been progressively declining in many higher educational environments. While the reduced TSR is not necessarily a drawback to the educational experience, it is generally believed -or perceived- that fewer students per qualified instructor can have a more positive effect on educational outcomes in terms of attention, learning efficiency, communication patterns, and overall student satisfaction. To simultaneously address issues of class size and course quality, the Academic Teaching and Learning Assistants Study (ATLAS) was developed at Northeastern University. ATLAS explores the effects of enlisting and training student peers from within an ongoing class to serve as "Quality Managers" for select lessons and labs in engineering courses. These Quality Managers (QM's) act as instructional and supportive extensions of the professor in more complex course environments. Following preparations with the instructor and some independent work on the labs or activities, QM's serve as assistants and/or reference resources to their peers in the class to help guide selected lessons. More details are set out in the body of the paper in terms of QM selection, responsibilities, roles, and outcomes. Participating students (Quality Managers and their course peers, referred to in this work as general students) completed an extensive questionnaire inquiring about the use of QM's in the classroom and, if applicable, their personal experience as a QM. The QM program was implemented across multiple academic levels: freshman (1st year), middler (3rd-year) and seniors (5th-year), and all levels participated in the feedback process. Empirical data gathered in the ATLAS initiative strongly supports the efficacy of the QM program and provides evidence that the use of Quality Managers has appreciably improved activities in classroom and lab settings and has enhanced the academic experience of the QM's themselves.