Mentoring New Online Graduate Teaching Assistants: From Concept to Practice

Abstract

ABSTRACT Much has been written concerning large, public universities and their utilization of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). However, most small, private colleges and universities do not use teaching assistants for online instruction. Therefore, providing online graduate students opportunities to build and hone their teaching practice is vitally important to the academy’s future. The purpose of this descriptive case study was to explain two frameworks that were developed to fill a gap in the literature pertaining to mentoring online doctoral graduate teaching assistants. The researchers summarize these frameworks, which focus on providing a teaching progression when mentoring doctoral teaching assistants in online courses. The framework employs a step-by-step, weekly progression over six weeks that develops graduate teaching assistants’ ability to teach online courses through weekly mentoring meetings and self-reflection to develop as future faculty.