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Evaluation Of The Training Program

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CONCLUDING REMARKS With this training program, we have for several years produced effective GTAs for our undergraduate classes, both in small classroom discussions and in chemistry laboratory instruction. The program evaluations provided overwhelmingly favorable feedback (see Fig.1). Within the six major training categories evaluated, three categories had no negative evaluations. The other three groups provided 97% favorable or neutral evaluations, with a maximum of 3% for poor evaluations. Surpassing our initial expectations, the results of these evaluations strongly support our conclusion that we have achieved the goals of the training program. It is satisfying to note that in going through the training program, the most highly rated …show more content…

On a scale from 1-10, we characterized 6-10 as "confident", 5 as "neutral", and 1-4 as "less-confident". For the assessment data from these three years as shown in Figure 2, it clearly showed a very successful training program. Empowered with pedagogy and confidence, three formal GTA participants from our training program moved on to work as teaching fellows in the Chicago Center for Teaching at The University of Chicago: two teaching consultants and one senior teaching consultant. Figure 2: Three-year data on GTA teaching confidence following the training program (2012-2014) Although the community and social activities were by no means rated poorly, they received the lowest ranking of all categories, with 60% positive, 37% neutral, and 3% negative. This provided us insight into needed improvements going forward in the training program as well as the realistic thoughts of the incoming GTAs. Clearly, we need strategies to stimulate GTAs enthusiasm in this specific component of the training. Several possible factors may have contributed to this relatively imperfect rating. One of reasons may be that, when entering as new graduate students to a premier research institution, many incoming GTAs are mentally pre-research-oriented. If GTAs do not see an immediate benefit to their teaching roles, the preexisting biases may lead to a skewed rating. Another reason, which is related to

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