In engineering departments where teaching assistants (TAs) often lead recitation sessions and hold "office hours" in tutoring centers, it is important that these TAs can clearly communicate new, discipline-specific, technical information to other students who have a technical background, but lack expertise in the topic at hand. In order to address this need, a 5 hour teaching workshop for TA candidates at RIT has been developed, with the intention of giving students the skills they need to be able to teach other students. The initial results of the workshop are favorable. Out of the seventeen prior attendees, students on average felt that each of the five sessions was helpful (minimum score 4.18/5), and all students agreed or strongly agreed that they would recommend the workshop to other students. We hypothesize that participation in this workshop will improve the communication skills of students working as TAs in engineering departments. This informational paper presents an overview of the workshop, along with student feedback to date and future plans that will enable testing of the hypothesis.
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