The Impact of a Team of Undergraduate TAs in a First-Year Seminar

Shelley Judge, William Santella, Wylie Greeson, Juda Culp, Christa Craven, & Mazvita Chikomo; College of Wooster

The Issue

Institutions of every size enroll new undergraduates in first-year seminar (FYS) courses to aid the transition to college. FYS courses have varied approaches: some are discipline-specific introductions, others support acclimatization to college life, and still others prefer a hybrid approach. Research on the positive impact of FYS is well documented (Goodman and Pascarella, 2006), and recent work focuses on the impact of upperclassmen as peer leaders in FYS courses (Zhang, 2017). Zhang (2017) reports that upperclass mentors positively affect academic achievement, campus involvement, and persistence of FYS students. These types of studies underscore the importance of peer role models in FYS classrooms.

At The College of Wooster (OH), FYS is an interdisciplinary writingintensive course that develops critical thinking skills and serves as a platform for successful academic advising and college integration. Faculty focus on content-knowledge and social adaptability in small class sizes (~15 students) because FYS is critical to student retention at Wooster, a residential, private, liberal arts college with an enrollment of ~2000 undergraduates. The college is best known for its senior capstone experience, required of all graduates since 1947, so FYS is important as the writing and research foundation for future scaffolding in individual departments. Most FYS sections (~35-40/year) at Wooster use one undergraduate teaching assistant (UTA), and some use a peer mentor, an upperclass student formally trained at the college in academic advising.

Our purpose is to outline how discipline content, transition advice, classroom community, and mentoring was achieved in a remote FYS during fall 2020. We incorporated more UTAs than usual (3) plus an academic peer mentor. This team approach increased interactions with students and provided flexibility during mentoring. Both building community and establishing credibility were integral to our geospatial-themed FYS course. To accomplish this, conversations in FYS often strayed outside the boundaries of disciplinary topics. This can stretch faculty who are accustomed to bringing their discipline-specific knowledge and pedagogy into the classroom. Relatedly, it can be puzzling for students to listen to and implement faculty-based suggestions from adults whom they do not view as role models. To mitigate this, UTAs became invaluable to our FYS approach, serving as upperclass mentors.

The UTA Program

At Wooster, UTAs are full-time students enrolled in an experiential learning course, Teaching Apprenticeship. FYS faculty with UTAs also oversee the Teaching Apprenticeship course, which is graded and worth 1.00 credits (3 contact hours/week). For some UTAs this counts as one of their four semester courses; for others it is an overload. Because they are full-time students, UTAs do not pay extra tuition, nor are they paid. UTAs gain experience with course design, pedagogical decisions, and classroom/office hour situations. Faculty teaching FYS not only support and encourage their first-year students, but they also simultaneously mentor individual UTAs, providing formative feedback when needed.

Importance of UTAs

A faculty-UTA team can create a strong alliance and sense of community in the classroom. One objective in FYS isto encourage academic communication based on a framework of trust and respect that would be a springboard to learning content. To do this, we use clear FYS program learning objectives that encompassed both discipline-specific critical thinking and advising/integration goals. Referring to these learning objectives throughout FYS helped students become aware of common responsibilities and the course trajectory. The UTAs were excellent role models in messaging both content knowledge and academic advising. Sometimes, faculty can lose relevancy as role models due to age, lack of social connection, or demographic differences, but they can adapt through new pedagogies, energy, and humor. Upperclass mentors in the classroom in strong alliance with faculty work to bridge new collegians to academic life.

Team Composition

During fall 2020, I (SJudge) used three UTAs and one peer mentor in a remote FYS section. Three UTAs attended each class session and were selected to improve the student-to-UTA ratio (5:1) so that small group discussions each had a mentor. Each UTA had previous geospatial coursework, so they helped with content knowledge and software. One UTA had served earlier as a Wooster Course Design Assistant (CDA) for my FYS planning during summer 2020. Launched by our Dean for Faculty Development (CCraven), the CDA program had undergraduates assist faculty with course design “pivots” due to the pandemic. The remaining two UTAs in my FYS brought valuable experiences in a range of co- and extra-curricular activities on campus.

Every few weeks our team collaborated with a peer mentor assigned to our class. Wooster’s Office of Advising, Planning, and Experiential Learning (APEX) hires and trains upperclass students in techniques the support positive college transitions. Our peer mentor attended FYS discussions focused on academic advising but also excelled at one-onone meetings with students outside of class. Because the roles of UTAs and peer mentors did overlap, students were able to select compatible role models.

Building Community

Faculty often relinquish some control when encouraging a climate of mutual respect, kindness, civility, and support in the classroom. A significant strategy used to foster community in our FYS was the UTA-peer mentor team because they modeled college behavior to 15 first-year students—eight on campus and seven participating remotely from Georgia, Ohio, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, and Ukraine. The UTAs enriched FYS by participating in class discussions, helping teach geospatial concepts, and meeting one-on-one with students for academic and personal support. UTAs also were responsible for “TA Moments,” time on Fridays devoted to life as new collegians. FYS students responded positively to the UTAs, always asking many questions. The cadre of upper-class mentors fielded those questions with grace and ease. They advocated for the same student success strategies as the faculty, telling students to eat right, get enough sleep, exercise regularly, and take good notes. Where faculty might have been met with overt eye-rolls, the UTAs were able to initiate credible, meaningful conversations.

Assessment and Impact

Improving the student-to-UTA ratio was a priority to improve individual attention in the classroom and to promote student integration. This priority paid dividends by the end of the semester because we fostered effective and cordial communication among all students. FYS became a welcoming entry point into a community built around academic inquiry. The payoffs were tangible for everyone involved, class participation was notably high, and the students learned the academic and social expectations of Wooster courses. In addition, because the FYS team supplied academic assistance and focused on improving individual student writing in a respectful mentoring environment, new students obtained the foundation for their four-year college career.

At the end of the semester, student perception of UTA impact was assessed in a survey. Students rated ten statements on a five-point scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” and then answered open-ended questions about the role of each UTA. Survey results illustrate the positive influence UTAs had on students. Over 90% of students thought the UTAs helped them adjust to college, improved class discussions, treated them with respect, and acted with enthusiasm during class sessions. Between 75-80% of students felt the UTAs helped with writing, technical skills, and academic success. The UTAs were role models for our maturing collegians.

In a post-semester assessment reflection, the UTAs reported they felt confident, prepared, and relaxed while carrying out their FYS duties during the semester. The only “pressure” seemed internal: to provide the proper advice to students and to ensure their advice did not conflict with others on the FYS team. One UTA said, “As UTAs, we’re just students. The reason why we were so effective was because we didn’t have the same limitations and were not vastly older than the first-year students.” UTAs provided insights on things that faculty could not, such as social events and dorm life. They overcame faculty limitations, allowing faculty to focus on disciplinary expertise, pedagogical knowledge, and the occasional nugget of advice from life experiences.

Future Implications

An FYS program should continually improve based on assessment results and classroom experiences. From assessment results, our FYS core value of building a congenial and respectful academic community is a characteristic that future FYS sections must embrace. Academic achievement and social integration within the community led to increased student retention, an outcome important to institutions. There also are ingredients for building community that must persist. UTAs will be viewed as role models, so they should demographically represent the student body. The UTA team needs to complement one another so that diverse perspectives are added to our FYS academic environment. However, to build camaraderie within the classroom, there must be team cohesion between the faculty and the UTAs. Whether the UTAs are from the faculty’s home department or another department across campus, primary consideration should be the quality, honesty, respect, and ease of interactions between the faculty and UTA team because students will respond constructively to agreement and purpose in the classroom.

Future iterations of this FYS will see modifications, based on assessment data; however, the format will be in-person instead of hybrid. While the same student-to-UTA ratio will be a priority to encourage small group mentoring, the formation of micro-FYS communities that pair one UTA with several students would foster deeper academic and social connections for the first-year students. An increase in team-building activities at the beginning of the semester and punctuated throughout is needed to enhance communication. Finally, faculty will select at least one of the three UTAs from outside of the home department to expand academic discourse. Students in FYS often do not yet know their majors, so it is important that they interact with UTAs from diverse perspectives because that will prepare them for the discipline communities the FYS students will enter as they embark on their college careers.

References

Goodman, K. & Pascarella, E. T. (2006). First-year seminars increase persistence and retention: A summary of the evidence from How College Affects Students. Peer Review, 8(3), 26-28.

Zhang, L. (2017). Student involvement as a mediator of the relationship of peer leaders in first-year seminars to academic achievement and persistence [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of South Carolina.