What's stopping them? Perspectives of teaching assistants on incorporating diverse teaching methods

Abstract

The benefits of active learning have been demonstrated in recent research. Still, instructors of courses particularly in engineering hesitate in adopting such methods, teaching assistants included. This paper discusses an online survey sent to teaching assistants within the mechanical engineering department at a research university where information was collected regarding perspectives and practice of non- Traditional teaching techniques. The survey contained eight items that included a mixture of selected response and open-ended response. Motivated by the outcomes of the survey, this paper then presents a variety of teaching activities tailored to overcome the barriers that teaching assistants face in incorporating diverse teaching methods. The 'tricks of the trade' that are selected require modest preparation and few resources that instructors can easily incorporate into the lecture to break up the pace, regain focus, and strengthen the amount of information retained. At institutions where a smaller discussion section supplements a large lecture, the reduced class size is ideal for a novice instructor to introduce unfamiliar teaching methods. The included techniques (pauses, think pair share, minute papers, effective questions, and a flipped review session) are specifically adapted for use in engineering courses and personal examples from the classroom are given. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2014.