Evaluation of the Learning Support Strategies for Teaching Assistants

This paper proposes a learning support strategy that allows teaching assistants (TAs) to support students independently in their programming lessons. Students need the help of TAs to solve their problems, but often hesitate to ask questions. However, since most TAs are inexperienced in teaching, they may overlook students that need maximum help. Previous research proposed that it is not enough to present a learning situation to the TA. Also, it is necessary to provide support, including the presentation of action guidelines for TAs to enable them to address the students. To solve these problems this paper proposes strategies that suggest the TA's support to appropriate students. From the experimental results, we evaluate the strategies used in the actual lessons and the effectiveness of the system. The results demonstrate that the strategies could be a scaffolding for TAs to address students.