Utilizing Undergraduate Assistants In General Education Courses

Abstract

This conceptual article relates a best-practice paradigm for undergraduate faculty who teach relatively large, undergraduate, general education courses and utilize an undergraduate teaching assistant (TA).  Suggested characteristics for successful TAs are related as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that help recruit quality assistants.  Five factors are shared that are believed to have made an undergraduate TA program successful for 20 years: the quality of students recruited, helping students to handle well their peer-relationships with students in the class, learning which items can and cannot successfully be delegated to TAs, harnessing the potency of relationships, and maintaining a healthy benefit/cost equilibrium with TAs.