Large-Program, Face-to-Face

University of Colorado Boulder

Context at a Glance:

● Research 1 Institution (~30,000 undergraduate students)

● Large LA Program (currently ~210 LAs per semester)

○ Program started in 2003 in four departments; current program includes 10-11 departments in any given semester, in STEM disciplines and Education

○ Fall 2010 was the first semester that the Pedagogy Course split into two sections

○ Anticipate expansion into English in Fall 2018, which requires revisiting how to organize the Pedagogy Course

○ Partnership with Front Range Community College started in Fall 2017; their new LAs participate in the Pedagogy Course (online version) with CU Boulder LAs. The online version was the only viable way for this to work; FRCC LAs were unable to make it to CU Boulder to participate in face-to-face sections.

● Large LA Pedagogy Course, with ~140 new LAs in 7-8 sections:

○ Structured as an upper-level 2-credit course, EDUC 4610: “Becoming an LA”

○ Three to four “face-to-face” (F2F) sections, 20-30 LAs per section

○ Four online sections, 10-16 LAs per section

● Face-to-face sections are multidisciplinary, including LAs from math, biology, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, astronomy, atmospheric and oceanic sciences, psychology and neuroscience, general engineering, computer science, and education

● Online sections include two math-focused sections (and sometimes engineering and/or physics) and two multidisciplinary science sections (currently constrained to chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, and atmospheric/oceanic sciences)

● New LAs from Front Range Community College (Boulder County Campus) take the online version of the course with CU Boulder LAs.

● The instructional team includes LA Program Directors, Science Education faculty members from the School of Education, instructors who have college-level and high-school level teaching experience, math and science education graduate students, and Learning Assistants (it’s helpful to have LAs even for the LA course!)