How can a university fulfill its commitment to make STEM for All a reality? In Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Sophia Rahming, she describes an innovative strategy used by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Florida State University to empower undergraduate Learning Assistants to partner with graduate Teaching Assistants and course faculty so that first and second year students have what they need to succeed in gateway STEM courses.
Memorable moments:
[00:04:12] They're the eyes and ears of the faculty member, right? Because when they have their weekly meetings with their faculty colleague, they're going to say 'Sophia understood X, but when you got to Y she didn't get it.’
[00:05:11] What we're finding is that kind of synergy, that redesigned coursework so that it's active, and then these instructional supports - LAs - along with traditional supports, TAs, are really moving the needle at our institution. We're seeing our DFW rates drop.
[00:11:07] How can I improve this so that my students are achieving more? Think through the students eyes. What might they miss? And this is where your LAs really come in, right? Because they're still students.
[00:15:17] We have this collaboration that happens across FSU that, to my knowledge, happens nowhere else. We have this committee that is made up of professionals, faculty members across the institution who come together every two weeks to talk about admissions and retention, program after program after program, talking about student success every two weeks.
Episode 8 Transcript:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OdtZol9NpUsmw2g9AUx5VyhzpbqbKcaTKz5yitEO5ds/edit?usp=sharing
More resouces:
Book mentioned in this episode:
How Learning Works by Susan Ambrose, et al: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7036409-how-learning-works
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