How Do Teaching Assistants Teach? Characterizing the Interactions Between Students and TAs in a Computer Science CourseFull paper
Teaching assistants (TAs) play a crucial role in Computer Science courses. When a student is stuck or confused, they often rely on a TA to help them understand a concept or debug their program. At the same time, TAs in Computer Science courses are often very new at teaching, and somewhat new at programming. They may lack the knowledge and resources necessary to help students learn effectively. This work seeks to better understand the nature of TA-student interactions and identify potential opportunities for improvement. We conducted an observational study of one-on-one TA-Student interactions during office hours of a Computer Science course, and analyzed these interactions through the lens of known practices of effective one-on-one tutors. We found that TA-Student interactions focus on code over concepts, and this focus may be detrimental to TAs’ use of good tutoring practices.
Thu 15 SepDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
14:00 - 15:15 | Session on Programming EducationResearch Papers at San Francesco Room Chair(s): Judith Good University of Amsterdam | ||
14:00 30mTalk | ParamMacros: Creating UI Automation Leveraging End-User Natural Language ParameterizationFull paper Research Papers DOI | ||
14:30 30mTalk | How Do Teaching Assistants Teach? Characterizing the Interactions Between Students and TAs in a Computer Science CourseFull paper Research Papers Yana Malysheva Washington University in St. Louis, John Allen Washington University in St. Louis, Caitlin Kelleher Washington University in St. Louis DOI | ||
15:00 15mTalk | Is Assertion Roulette still a test smell? An experiment from the perspective of testing educationShort paper Research Papers Gina Bai North Carolina State University, Kai Presler-Marshall North Carolina State University, Susan Fisk Kent State University, Kathryn Stolee North Carolina State University DOI |