Through the looking glass: reflections on using undergraduate teaching assistants in CS1

  • Authors:

  • Adrienne Decker;Phil Ventura;Christopher Egert

  • Affiliations:

  • University at Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY;St. Thomas University, Miami Gardens, FL;Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Over the last several years, there have been reports of many institutions using undergraduate students as teaching assistants (UTAs) in the classroom for CS1 as well as other courses in the curriculum. The literature has shown successes over a wide range of class sizes and UTA responsibilities. At University at Buffalo, we have been using undergraduates as teaching assistants in our CS1 course since Spring 2002, and have been impressed with the results. Throughout the deployment of the UTA program, the instructors of CS1 have observed that when UTAs are utilized in the classroom, both the students and the UTAs themselves benefit from their interactions. The UTAs have also become actively involved in providing feedback about the course design and have been suggesting improvements to assignments and in-class examples. They have also been involved in the process to hire new UTAs to replace those that are graduating. We have observed that such interactions have improved the UTAs sense of investment and ownership in the CS1 course.