Creating Collaborative, TA-centered Weekly Instructional Meetings to Support Student-centered Laboratory Instruction

 

Jonathan Horn & Erica Szeyller

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2019, Volume 40

Abstract

In large lab courses weekly instructional meetings are paramount to course communication and uniform lab curriculum delivery, but can become tedious and ineffectual. We identified multiple challenges in our meetings, including: poor efficiency, too much focus on negative student interactions (‘venting’), reliance on lecture-style information delivery, decreased meeting value for repeat TAs, poor meeting preparedness by new TAs, and persistent misconceptions regarding lab pedagogy. We addressed these challenges by creating more collaborative, supportive, and TA-centered meetings that focus on student learning. In this session, we shared our methods, rationale, and discoveries in redesigning our weekly instructional meetings. Participants used backward design to develop a plan for implementing TA-centric and learning goals-oriented instructional meetings at their own institutions.

Keywords:  interactive, backward design, instructional meeting

The Ohio State University (2018)