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Many institutions use undergraduate teaching assistants (tutors) in their computing courses to help provide more resources to students. Because of the role tutors play in students' learning experiences, recent work in computing education has begun to explore student-tutor interactions through the tutor's perspective and through direct observation of the interactions. The results suggest that these interactions are cognitively challenging for tutors and may not be as beneficial for students' learning as one might hope. Given that many of these interactions may be unproductive, this work seeks to understand how student expectations of these sessions might be impacting the interactions' effectiveness. We interviewed 15 students in a CS2 course to learn about the expectations and desires that students have when they attend tutoring sessions. Our findings indicate that there is variation in what students consider a desired result from the interaction, that assignment deadlines affect students' expectations and desires for interactions, and that students do not always want what they believe is beneficial for their learning. We discuss implications for instructors and potential guidance for students and tutors to make tutoring sessions more effective.
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Making in‐the‐moment learning visible: A framework to identify and compare various ways of learning through continuity and discourse change
Small group interactions and interactions with near‐peer instructors such as learning assistants serve as fertile opportunities for student learning in undergraduate active learning classrooms. To understand what students take away from these interactions, we need to understand how and what they learn during the moment of their interaction. This study builds on practical epistemology analysis to develop a framework to study this in‐the‐moment learning during interactions by operationalizing it through the lens of discourse change and continuity toward three ends. Using video recordings of students and learning assistants interacting in a variety of contexts including remote, in‐person, and hybrid classrooms in introductory chemistry and physics at two universities, we developed an analytical framework that can characterize learning in the moment of interaction, is sensitive to different kinds of learning, and can be used to compare interactions. The framework and its theoretical underpinnings are described in detail. In‐depth examples demonstrate how the framework can be applied to classroom data to identify and differentiate different ways in which in‐the‐moment learning occurs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2000603
- PAR ID:
- 10543238
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Science Education
- Volume:
- 108
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 0036-8326
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1292 to 1328
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21874
