Barker Megan K
Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
J Microbiol Biol Educ. 2023 May 16;24(2). doi: 10.1128/jmbe.00191-22. eCollection 2023 Aug.
When coordinating teams of teaching assistants (TAs) in our courses, it can be time and resource prohibitive to provide mentorship for individual professional development of their teaching. Peer observation of teaching is a useful and effective approach for professional development and for forming a community of practice that TAs can engage in. However, structured peer observation can require substantial training - which may make it infeasible for large teams of TAs with variable teaching expertise and limited contract hours. This article describes the development of an observation protocol, adapted for the TA context, from the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS; by Smith et al. 2013). We have used this successfully, with very minimal training (15-min discussion plus one practice observation). I include the modified form (COPUS-TA) for practical and immediate use in supporting the development of TAs' teaching skills.
在我们的课程中协调助教团队时，为他们的教学个人专业发展提供指导可能会耗费时间和资源。同伴教学观察是促进专业发展以及形成助教能够参与的实践社区的一种有用且有效的方法。然而，结构化的同伴观察可能需要大量培训，这对于教学专业知识参差不齐且合同工时有限的大型助教团队来说可能不可行。本文描述了一种观察协议的开发，它是在本科STEM课堂观察协议（COPUS；由史密斯等人于2013年制定）的基础上，针对助教的情况进行改编的。我们已经成功使用了这个协议，只进行了极少的培训（15分钟的讨论加上一次实践观察）。我附上了修改后的形式（COPUS-TA），以便在实际中立即用于支持助教教学技能的发展。
