Learning Assistants (LAs) communicating difficult concepts and support students with diverse strengths, needs, and resources. Creating this effective, inclusive learning environment is challenging. To support LAs in taking on this role they engage in a course on effective pedagogy, participate in weekly preparation sessions with faculty mentors. This page provides a glimpse into the essential elements of the LA Model and how they are used at CSU.
Dawyne (Physics LA) and Drs. Peters and Sabella meet before students engage in a laboratory on Balancing and Equilibrium of Rigid Bodies and discuss how best to help students develop a model that allows them to predict whether an object is in equilibrium. Weekly preparation sessions are import for LAs to review material, practice guided inquiry, and think about how they will support students in their LA assignments in thinking about these challenging ideas. [Context: Prep session for Introductory Physics course @ Chicago State University]
LAs provide feedback based on the students’ perspectives both with regard to content learning and the climate of the course. Faculty mentors and LAs can act on this feedback to collaboratively make changes in the classroom to impact student understanding. In this clip, Patricia responds to her faculty mentor’s query about pacing of an activity. As a way to reinforce understanding and to make the conceptual load of the activity more manageable, Patricia suggests a mini-quiz, which her faculty mentor readily decides to incorporate into the lesson. She also conveys student perspectives on questioning in the class. [Context: Prep session for Junior/Senior level Biochemistry course @ Chicago State University]
One type of project in the LA pedagogy course is an activity that they implement in either a HS class or a college setting. In this clip, Tiara (lower right) explains how she has developed a POGIL worksheet to support students in the college Organic Chemistry course. She describes how she used interviews with students to target specific ideas and meet the students where they are in their understanding.
LA work in the pedagogy course and the weekly preparation sessions prepare them for their assignments, where they work alongside faculty mentors to assist students in our CSU courses.
Example from Physics
Example from Chemistry