Assessing a GTA professional development program

TL;DR

This paper evaluates a comprehensive GTA professional development program at Georgia Tech, showing it enhances teaching preparedness, promotes learner-centered strategies, and improves student evaluation scores.

Contribution

It introduces an integrated assessment approach for GTA training programs, demonstrating their positive impact on teaching effectiveness.

Findings

GTAs find the program's activities useful

Participants feel more prepared for teaching

Higher teaching evaluation scores for program participants

Abstract

For the last four years, the School of Physics at Georgia Tech have been preparing new Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) through a program that integrates pedagogy, physics content, and professional development strategies. Here we discuss various assessments we have used to evaluate the program, among them surveys, GTA self-reporting, and end-of-semester student evaluations. Our results indicate that GTAs who participate in the program find its practical activities useful, feel better prepared for teaching, make use of learner-centered teaching strategies, and receive higher scores in teaching evaluations.