I served as an undergraduate teaching assistant (UTA) for Dr. Moore’s Psychology of Sex course for the Fall 2020 semester. In this role, I was mainly a facilitator for engaging students in critical thinking and communication skills. In addition to faciliatating activities that encouraged such skills, I tracked student engagement weekly and provided feedback on some of the “bigger” assignments such as papers and class presentations.

In a class, students should be able to think critically and apply concepts to the real world. As a result of me being an undergraduate teaching assistant, I believe that students learned how to think critically and apply concepts from the readings and notes to reality.  As an undergraduate teaching assistant, I often reminded students to complete the readings the evening prior to class. When in class, I would ask group discussion questions provided by Dr. Moore, but I would ask students questions that allowed to think even more critically. (ex. “and what in the reading tells you that?” “if roles were reversed, do you believe that you would feel the same way?why?”) I also gave all members in my group the opportunity to speak up before giving the correct answer or building on what was intially discussed.

I think that these activities were beneficial to helping the student learn, especially engaging in group discussion. All of my students consistently demonstrated a sufficient understanding of the readings by engaging in group discussion. Each student consistently and enthusiastically engaged in discussion and showed that they completed readings through their ability to have conversation about the readings. I saw this reflected in their weekly engagement quiz grades, weekly student participation grades, and on their exam grades.

I think that students learn best from each other and from connecting the class material to real life.  From my own experience, having group discussion in class made the class more interesting and more likely to grasp the information. Hearing my peers rephrase or connect the information in class to real life scenarios and examples helped me to retain the information. I think that the professor giving us the space to connect with our peers over a specific concept, giving examples from their own personal life, or showing videos in the class that connected to the material has helped me the most in the past.

As a undergraduate teaching assistant, I facillated group discussion and I held study sessions. In group discussions, I would allow my group to answer the discussion about their opinions on certain topics in the course and then defend their opinion with points from the readings or class material, and they’d ask me about what I thought or a time that I experienced something specific and I’d answer the question myself. In my study sessions, I, along with other UTAs, asked the students to answer and explain their “why’s” or “why nots”. And if they were wrong, we would ask for another student to give the correct answer and explain the rest of the study session why or why not.