An engineering teaching assistant orientation program: Guidelines, reactions, and lessons learned from a one day intensive training program

At Purdue University, an all-campus one day intensive training orientation for new teaching assistants has been in place since 2001 under the supervision of the university´s Center for Instructional Excellence. At Purdue, engineering teaching assistants serve a fundamentally different role than those in other disciplines. Recognizing these differences, in 2005 the training was divided into separate engineering and non- engineering training sessions. This was done to better meet the roles, responsibilities and needs that are unique to engineering teaching assistants. The work presented in this paper describes the all-campus and engineering training programs at Purdue and demonstrates, through attitudinal and follow-up survey responses, that the separate engineering specific training program elicits a more positive reaction from engineering teaching assistants towards their training.