Assessing Learning Outcomes for Undergraduate Teaching Assistants and Peer Mentors

Abstract

This essay offers assessment rubrics for three of the most common modalities of engagement of undergraduate teaching assistants and peer mentors serving in the undergraduate classroom: leading/facilitating a whole-class activity or discussion, facilitating a small-group activity or discussion, and working with students one-on-one. In developing these assessment tools, we began with a sketch of our program’s learning objectives, and conducted an analysis of former UTAs’ start-of-semester “work plans” and end-of-semester “final reflections,” which allowed us to better match the rubrics with students’ own goals / motivations for serving as UTAs and perceptions of their own experiences as UTAs. We hope that these three assessment rubrics can be productively adopted or adapted by other faculty mentors working with undergraduate teaching assistants or peer mentors in similar programs, as well as stimulate further discussion about appropriate learning objectives and assessment resources for such programs.

Keywords

• undergraduate teaching assistants, peer mentors, learning objectives, learning outcomes, assessment, self-assessment, rubrics