The Virtual TA:
Moving Beyond the Traditional Teaching Assistant


Denise Stockley and Vivian Rossner

Simon Fraser University
E-mail: dstockle@sfu.ca and vivian_rossner@sfu.ca
URL:

Participating in an online environment can potentially be a daunting experience for faculty members, teaching assistants, and students alike. For the faculty members and students there is substantial literature to support their quest for using this new learning tool (e.g. Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turoff, 1995; Hiltz, 1990; Hiltz, 1994). However, other than some sparse anecdotal commentary on the Internet, there appears to be no substantive studies that address the pedagogical needs of teaching assistants. The question, then, is where do teaching assistants learn to be online facilitators? This paper examines open-ended interview data collected from teaching assistants with online experience. The purpose of our study is to derive educational strategies from this data that is designed to provide teaching assistants with pedagogical support for future online teaching. To this end we surveyed teaching assistants who had taught in both online and traditional classroom environments.

For this study, we asked teaching assistants to respond to a series of demographic and experience-based questions. Teaching assistants were defined as those individuals who had not designed the course, were graduate students, and were working under the supervision of a faculty member. Participants were initially contacted by phone and then completed the interview questions through e-mail. The questions covered attitudinal transformation from the initial stages of working online through to the final stages of the course. The interviews highlighted participants familiarity with the types of technology required for their course and the time spent online. Of particular interest was how the teaching assistant organized the volume of responses received and how they provided substantive feedback to students. Further, we asked if they had advice for others and if they would do anything differently after their online experience.

Results indicate that responses can be organized into four distinct categories, each pointing to the need to develop strategic interventions. These are:

In this paper we present a number of strategies designed to assist online facilitators with procedures and processes that enhance the online experience.

References

Harasim, L., Hiltz, R., Teles, L., & Turoff, M. (1995). Learning networks: A field guide to teaching and learning online. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hiltz, S.R. (1990). Evaluating the virtual classroom. In L. Harasim (ed.), Online education: Perspectives on an new environment (pp. 133-18). New York: Prager Publications.

Hiltz, S.R. (1994). The virtual classroom: A new option for learning via computer networking. Norwood, NJ. Ablex.

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