Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play an essential role in the teaching of introductory chemistry courses at many higher education institutions. On the basis of best practices suggested by the literature, we developed our GTA training course to focus on modeling best practices in the classroom, providing opportunities for incoming GTAs to try new teaching methodologies and reflect on their teaching, and observing and giving feedback on their teaching throughout the course. Here we describe the structure of a GTA training course, provide our course evaluation methods, and present end-of-semester survey data from trainee GTAs (t-GTAs) and experienced GTA (e-GTA) volunteers that helped with the course. The findings indicate that the majority of t-GTAs appreciated the course structure and topics. In particular, t-GTAs found discussions helped them learn the material and greatly appreciated the opportunity to observe someone teaching and be observed during their teaching. Several areas for improvement were also identified, including more opportunities to observe peers, additional topics such as classroom management, and greater support in applying course topics to individual teaching environments. e-GTAs on the other hand reported positively on how the course impacted their own professional development through honing their observational skills and their ability to provide constructive feedback, as well as adding to their own knowledge on teaching methodologies through observing t-GTAs. Intending to provide insight on how course evaluation data can be used to inform change, we discuss our findings in terms of the specific changes that will be made at Purdue Chemistry in future course iterations, as well as in terms of implementing or revising GTA training at other institutions. We hope that the course structure, evaluation approach, and data described here provide insight into other institutions interested in changing their own GTA programs.
Reports of the results of research within the emerging field of biochemistry education are appearing at an ever-increasing rate. Capturing an image of the landscape of Biochemistry Education Research (BCER) is complicated, however, by the interdisciplinary nature of biochemistry courses that may be taught at different levels and in different departments, even at the same institution. To develop a model that provides a sense of what research has been done, so far, we have investigated the literature on biochemistry education research within the contexts of the traditional biochemistry lecture and laboratory environments as well as courses taught within the health sciences, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, and molecular biology, as well as courses that combine biochemistry with other topics in chemistry, such as general chemistry and organic chemistry. We found that existing BCER has focused primarily on the lecture/classroom environment. Only about one-fourth of the BCER literature has been based on research in the laboratory setting. We also noted that the primary focus of research done so far has been on the structure/function properties of proteins. The goal of this review was a holistic understanding of the results of BCER that could be used by instructors to shape classroom practice as well as to provide BCER practitioners with an idea of the gaps in the existing literature that could be filled by future research. To transform the results of our analysis into a publishable form, we have used a format in which brief summaries of the topics of the BCER papers are presented.
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