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Laboratory Tales from Teaching Assistants
This online publication contains case studies designed to help graduate students who become Teaching Assistants (TAs) in biology and chemistry facilitate the curiosity and learning of the undergraduates they teach. The cases, written by TAs at the University of Delaware as a final assignment for a course, "Introduction to Laboratory Instruction," are fictionalized but based on experience. They explore a wide range of issues in several major categories: lab safety, lab management, education, student concerns, TA issues, and problems outside the lab. For example, how should a TA handle a student who needs constant attention? How should a TA grade a lab when students answer a question with the explanation the TA provided—but the explanation is wrong? How should a TA deal with a student who has invited him to a party where underage drinking occurred—but is later threatened with retaliation unless he gives the student a better lab grade? Faculty members or other discussion leaders who use these case studies as teaching tools are encouraged to help TAs address the issues involved, appropriate courses of action, the implications of the actions, and the ways the situations presented could have been prevented or muted.
Concept Map Poster of the University of Delaware HHMI Program
As part of this program's emphasis on stimulating attitudes of inquiry, graduate teaching assistants are encouraged to use active learning techniques and strategies with undergraduates.
Media: PDF
What Do I Do Now? Laboratory Tales from Teaching Assistants
This collection of teaching cases is designed to help graduate teaching assistants become familiar with problems they might encounter and issues they should consider in trying to resolve problems.
Media: PDFProgram Director: Harold B. White III, Ph.D.
Award Years: 1992, 1998, 2002, 2006
Summary: The University of Delaware is a public research university in Newark, Delaware. Its HHMI-funded initiatives include:
- The establishment of a Quantitative Biology Major in the Mathematics Department—the only Bio-Math program in the country that is offered as a degree program in a department of mathematics;
- A summer undergraduate research scholar program, which includes a weekly interdisciplinary enrichment program devoted to research science topics such as ethics and gender issues;
- A Network of Undergraduate Collaborative Learning Experiences for Underrepresented Scholars (NUCLEUS) program, which provides the support necessary for underrepresented students to successfully continue their education beyond the baccalaureate degree; and
- Programs to train new, current and future faculty in the use of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) through the university's Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education and through pedagogy courses for undergraduate PBL group facilitators and graduate teaching assistants.