An Investigation into Laboratory GTA Training and Support

Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) play a pivotal role in undergraduate education, often having more contact hours with students than their lecturers do. Their training and support needs of these postgraduates who teach should not be overlooked. The provision and content of training programmes for GTAs differ widely across Universities and teaching disciplines; often these are not easily transferable to other contexts due to constraints in time for engagement, funding and staffing, as well as accounting for differences in GTA job roles between different insitutions. This institutional variation therefore requires that laboratory managers consider a tailored approach to providing appropriate support for their GTAs. In this study, we investigated the current support provided for new GTAs in the School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, with the aim of a delivering a partnership approach for reviewing and enhancing our training provision.

This work was done in collaboration with an undergraduate student (Eileen de Sousa) and involved surveying postgraduate students to help ground the work in student experiences at all levels to provide meaningful insights.

This poster was first presented at Chemistry Laboratory: Evaluation, Assessment, Research (CLEAR) online symposium on 16 May 2020.