Training teaching assistants as coaches

Abstract – The role of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) is becoming more demanding as engineering education places an increased emphasis on teamwork and design. For undergraduate students to excel, GTAs must help them form well-functioning teams and encourage them to operate as self-directed learners. In other words, GTAs should operate more as coaches rather than teachers. Many GTAs, unfortunately, lack the basic competencies of to perform as a coach. In this work, we present a 3-hour workshop designed to address this skills gap. The role of a coach and basic theoretical concepts, as well as a simple tool to elicit self-reflection in students are presented through a series of experiential exercises and discussions. The exercises also give participants an opportunity to practice these newly acquired skills while developing confidence in identifying scenarios where the tool may be applied. This workshop has been executed once with a group of 10 graduate engineering students at the University of Victoria. Survey results have been encouraging, we believe that the participants successfully acquired basic coaching competencies and applied them to their interactions with undergraduate students.