DEVELOPING TEACHING-LEARNING SKILLS IN TEACHING ASSISTANTS OF ENGINEERING PROGRAMS

Science and engineering courses normally have components like practical work, laboratory experience and homework. Presently, this part of engineering education is mainly carried out by teaching assistants (TA). Although teaching assistants spend most number of hours with engineering students, they normally receive no training for effective class management and teaching. To improve the quality of education offered by TAs, the University College of Engineering at University of Tehran has launched a series of teaching workshops, presented by qualified professors. Since the beginning of this program in 2012, over 390 TAs of engineering programs have attended nine workshops. The information derived from the questionnaires filled at the end of each workshop reveal the main challenges and needs of the TAs. Based on the results of those questionnaire surveys and findings of similar programs in other countries, this paper presents a teaching program developed for TAs of engineering programs of Iran. To this end, a half a day workshop has been designed through which the TAs are introduced to the fundamentals of successful teaching-learning.