An online course was developed for ITAs in the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) as a way to help prepare them for their roles as teaching assistants. The course had 57 participants from China, India, Iran, South Korea, Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, Greece, Russia, Thailand, Uganda, and Vietnam. Participants had the opportunity to choose from two sections of the course―one week in June or one week in July. The pre-arrival online course preceded a 3-week face-to-face component, which began in August.

The goals of the course were that students would be able to

• know the meanings of categories of spoken English in our curriculum and how they contribute to comprehensibility;
• know the aspects of spoken English they need to improve;
• know how to use Praat to monitor and improve their spoken English;
• know the meanings of the fundamental teaching skills in our curriculum and how each promotes student learning;
• apply instructor feedback to improve their own speech;
• transcribe and begin to analyze their own speech
• recognize and describe effective and ineffective teaching by critically analyzing films; and
• identify and use a variety of acceptable language phrases/chunks for teaching-related language functions.

The CSE online course was staffed as follows: a project manager led a team of three course developers (all members of the ITA program staff at the University of Minnesota), a learning technology consultant, and an undergraduate teaching assistant.

The two sections of the online course were delivered by two different instructors. A majority of students were able to participate in and successfully complete the online course. Four students had scheduling or technology difficulties that resulted in them completing the online course concurrently with the face-to-face component in August.

STUDENT LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT

The online course consisted of four segments. Student learning was facilitated and assessed in numerous ways throughout. Feedback came through engagement with peers, computer-graded quizzes, and written and verbal comments from instructors.

The first segment of the course introduced students to each other, their instructors, and their role as teaching assistants. They watched films of their online and August instructors introducing themselves. For their self-introductions, they posted profiles with photos and made voice recordings about themselves. To begin to learn about their TA responsibilities, they watched two short films: a sample microteaching and “What Makes a Great TA?” which features real undergraduate students describing attributes of great TAs and giving advice to new international TAs. Then, to examine similarities and differences across cultures with regard to “good teaching,” students worked in small groups to respond in writing to several prompts. They then read and reacted to their peers’ posts. (Read a sample exchange here.)

The second segment of the course introduced students to the fundamental language and teaching skills they would develop further during the face-to-face program in August. After watching short Adobe Presenter films on these language and teaching fundamentals, they completed multiple-choice, immediate-feedback quizzes to check their understanding.

Next, students were taught to use Praat language analysis tools and the transcription process to evaluate their spoken pace, pausing, and use of thought groups. The last activity in segment two of the course required students to post a 5-minute voice recording of themselves teaching a topic from their discipline.

Students then transcribed and re-recorded a segment of their speech, attempting to both moderate their pace and pausing and improve their grammar and vocabulary. Below is Yanjia’s transcription. Hear it here.

There are also\ some POTENTIAL problems\ with the median. For example, \ one problem with using median\ is that\ it REQUIRES the numbers\ to be PUT IN ORDER FIRST. For a LARGE set of numbers,\ this task\ can be EXTREMELY LABORIOUS. And in real life,\ we often deal with\ LARGE datasets. To AVOID\ exhausting sorting,\ we tend to NOT\ use the median.

The instructor and undergraduate TA provided written and audio-recorded feedback on the language and teaching performance, with the undergraduate focusing primarily on overall clarity, organization, and comprehensibility. The instructor feedback, on the other hand, zeroed in on specific and individual aspects of spoken English, including pragmatics, suprasegmentals, and grammaticality.

Students were largely successful at integrating this feedback into their second 5-minute recorded teaching performance, which was assigned at the end of segment three. Prior to doing the second recording, they had the opportunity to watch several more teaching films, both microteachings and authentic problem-solving sections and labs filmed on campus. Their task was to further analyze both the teaching skills and the subtle discourse used by the TAs on screen. They were encouraged to listen for and adapt transferable expressions. For example, in the statistics film, the TA almost always uses the word “we,” creating a sense that she and the students were a team working together to solve the problems. She said, “We have a sample of N” and “That's the first rule we have up on the board.”

In the final segment of the online course, students were assigned several questions to guide reflection on what they had learned about their future role as a TA, what is expected of them, and how these differ or not from their home institutions. They also reflected on what they had learned about their current ability to convey disciplinary subject matter in English. Their final voice recording, then, was a synthesis of what they had gained from the course, as well as what question(s) they might like to investigate further upon arriving at the University of Minnesota. (Hear Evangelia’s recording here.)

EVALUATION

As part of an evaluation, students took a 5-point Likert scale survey. The following mean results are as follows:

• I am able to more easily recognize and describe effective and ineffective teaching (4.3 out of possible 5 points).
• I care more about my role as a teaching assistant (4.7).
• I am able to more easily identify and use a variety of acceptable phrases/chunks for teaching related functions (3.9).
• I feel more connected―to the college campus and to classmates (4.2).
• I feel more excited about coming to Minnesota (4.2).
• I have more realization that I need to learn more about U.S. classroom culture (4.4).

Open-ended questions on the survey included the following responses:

“Many aspects of this newly-held online course are very successful for it providing an access from international students to get a touch with the US course environment and classroom culture.”

“The feedbacks of the instructor are encouraging and helpful.”

Several students mentioned that they liked the student-instructor interactions and the feedback they received from instructors.

Suggestions for improvement included have more student-student interactions, have fewer technical problems, and have students do video rather than audio recordings.

INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONS

After teaching each online section, the instructional teams met and reflected on what went well and what to change for next year. Highlights of the lessons learned included

• Minimize technical problems by communicating to students well in advance the technical requirements (e.g., browser and settings, programs needed) and links to the free downloads they will need.
• Strike a tone in the instructors’ introduction films that is both professional and personal to encourage students to do the same.
• Design ongoing meaningful interaction among students. Establish groups immediately.
• Build in purposeful use of free Internet calling (e.g., via Skype or Gmail) for student-student and student-instructor interaction.
• Limit the enrollment to 25 per session (or co-teach the course) to facilitate more timely and in-depth feedback on voice recordings and written posts.
• Design as if the online and the face-to-face components are two elements of a hybrid experience―tightly bridged and interconnected by cross-referencing people, content, and skills.

SUMMARY

In 2012, the course will be offered again, this time to students who will have only 2 weeks of face-to-face programming upon arrival instead of three. For this reason, and based on student feedback, the design changes for next year include building in more self-paced language development, more interactivity among student groups / pairs, and, if students have the technology capabilities, filmed teaching performances instead of audio-only.

We also plan to conduct a follow-up survey of the 2011 students to find out what else they would suggest for both the online and face-to-face components of the course now that they are working as teaching assistants.

Overall, the instructors and students considered the online course to be a success. Students cited that they had a clearer understanding of what would be expected of them. Some cited reduced stress about their future TA work, while others admitted the job would present more challenges than they had anticipated. It is noteworthy that students of varying language abilities and with a range of previous teaching experience all reported finding value in the online course. Finally, the online course enabled students to establish social connections with peers and instructors prior to their arrival in Minnesota.

Kate Martin is assistant ITA Program director and an instructor at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include international student adjustment in their first semester of study.

Jeff Lindgren is assistant director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and he directs the International Teaching Assistant Program. He also develops workshops for faculty and teaching assistants on a variety of teaching and learning topics.