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Training Materials for TA Mentors
The resources on this website from HHMI Professor Diane O'Dowd at the University of California, Irvine, are designed to help new faculty, course coordinators, and other mentors of teaching assistants (TAs) train their TAs to be discussion leaders who use active learning techniques to engage students. The website contains appropriate activities for the four key periods of a course: Before Class Begins; The Early Weeks; Exam Prep; and After the Basics. In the “Before Class Begins” section, mentors will find suggestions and materials for creating a reference binder for each TA. In that section, a “microteaching” activity helps TAs prepare for those important first five minutes of class, another activity helps TAs balance teaching and research, and a third aids them in designing a discussion syllabus. In the “Early Weeks” section, mentors can use the “Top 10 Misconceptions about Teaching” to stop bad teaching habits before they start. In the “Exam Prep” section, an activity starts TAs thinking about writing good exams by having them deliberately write a bad one. Finally, the “After the Basics” section contains an activity to help TAs process the anonymous evaluations they receive during the year.
HHMI Professor: Diane O’Dowd, Ph.D.
Award Years: 2006
Summary: Diane O’Dowd, Ph.D., is an HHMI Professor at the University of California, Irvine, who uses Drosophila and mouse models to study the activity of living neurons from the brain. Her HHMI-funded initiatives include:
- A three-part program to bridge the divide between research and teaching in the biomedical sciences at research universities through teaching, training, and mentoring.
- Teaching: Identifying strategies to help faculty create dynamic learning environments that foster student engagement and development of critical thinking skills in large biology classes;
- Training: Establishing a formal training program in interactive teaching for graduate students and undergraduates with an interest in academic research and teaching careers. Graduate students receive training in the theory and practice of active learning and participate in a program designed to train them to balance concurrent teaching and research responsibilities. Undergraduates serve as peer tutors, giving them an opportunity to test their skills and aptitude for teaching; and
- Mentoring: Establishing a research mentoring program that pairs first-year undergraduate trainees with postdoctoral fellow mentors. The fellows receive formal training in overseeing undergraduate research before and during their active mentoring period.