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.