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In-Service Teaching Assistant Training (InsTAT)
for Engineering and Computer Science Graduate
Students in Hong Kong: A Blended-Learning
Approach
Kai-Pan Mark, Dimple R. Thadani, David Santandreu Calonge, Cecilia F.K. Pun, P.H. Patrio Chiu
City University of Hong Kong, markkp@cityu.edu.hk, dimplet@student.cityu.edu.hk, lsdavids@cityu.edu.hk,
fungkpun@student.cityu.edu.hk, phchiu@cityu.edu.hk
Abstract - In-service teaching assistant (TA) training
often receives relatively limited attention from university
decision makers when compared to the plethora of
courses designed for junior faculty (i.e., peer-to-peer
mentoring or 'buddy' system) in tertiary institutions
around the world. In Hong Kong, as in many other parts
of the world, TAs serve in different capacities to provide
front-line teaching and learning support in the
university, despite their insufficient experience in using
active learning strategies or grading students'
assignments. Major challenges faced by new TAs,
especially non-local graduates (as many of City
University of Hong Kong’s (CityU) graduate research
students are originally from the Chinese Mainland),
include the relative absence of teaching experience, the
difficulty to switch from a teacher-centered approach to
a student-centered approach, the adoption of English as
the medium of instruction (EMI), and role
transformation. This paper presents an innovative
approach in providing a compulsory In-service Teaching
Assistant Training (InsTAT) course for all graduate
research students at CityU before undertaking any
teaching-related duties: it includes an unconventional
but effective multi-directional engagement team teaching
approach with the extensive support of e-learning
technologies throughout the course. Comments and
feedback data show that students found the course very
engaging, useful, and innovative.
Index Terms - Teaching Assistant training, multi-directional
engagement team teaching, e-learning, outcome based
teaching and learning.
sessions, assessing and providing feedback to student
assignments and supporting General Education courses to
students from other disciplines.
Difficulties and issues encountered by new TAs warrant
attention from CityU‟s management and academic
departments for the following reasons: a) the near absence
of prior teaching and classroom management experience [1];
b) the sudden switch between „traditional‟ and active
teaching approaches, c) the abrupt change of medium of
instruction (MOI) for non-local TAs, and d) role
transformation [2]. In Hong Kong, the majority of full time
research students are non-locals (from Mainland China)
with different learning and teaching experience. Their
previous learning experience, as Tam et al. [3] suggest, a)
values the emphasis on memorization for examination, b)
has limited critical class interaction and c) is unaware of the
need to give any sort of feedback to students.
This paper chronicles the effective practices of a multidirectional engagement team teaching approach and the
adoption of e-learning technologies to engage engineering
and computer science graduate students‟ in-class
participation for reflective learning outcomes. The following
section introduces the related literature, followed by a
description of the teaching methodologies used. Evaluation
and reflections of the learning outcomes are then presented
with a discussion made in the subsequent section. Finally,
this paper ends with a conclusion.
RELATED WORKS
Higher institutions worldwide are increasingly under
financial pressure to maintain teaching and learning quality
despite heavy budget cuts. As a consequence, a) the number
of students in each class is considerably larger, b) more
INTRODUCTION
courses and programs are launched to stay competitive
In-service teaching assistants (TAs) play an important role
(while others are not phased out to avoid faculty outrage)
in the delivery of undergraduate courses. In Hong Kong,
and c) faculty‟s focus on research does not leave much
full-time graduate research students are assigned “academic
space for classroom teaching. Under such circumstances,
duties” as a condition of receiving any kind of stipends. In
the role and importance of TAs in delivering undergraduate
the fields of engineering and computer science at City
courses has increased significantly during the past decade.
University of Hong Kong (CityU), TAs‟ duties include
The TAs, often recruited from the graduate research
supervision of laboratory sessions, conducting tutorial
students‟ pool, serve as front-line teachers to interact with
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October 12 - 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD
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students in various settings. The new TAs who are
frequently first year research students, may not have
received any instructional training before performing their
teaching duties and are nevertheless sent to the „battlefield‟
unprepared and unmonitored.
I.
Challenges faced by new TAs
Without initial training and continuous support, new TAs
encounter different sorts of challenges in carrying out their
teaching duties. The first challenge is the absence of
classroom teaching experience, and the lack of guidance on
„how to teach‟ [1]. Most research students are fresh
graduates who never attended (or even thought of attending)
any staff development or classroom management course,
particularly in higher educational settings. Teaching anxiety
and fear is often found among new TAs which in turn
affects confidence, satisfaction, and class performance [4].
The second challenge is the indispensable and often
daunting switching of classroom teaching strategies, as
Hong Kong universities adopted outcomes based teaching
approaches. The new TAs, once in Hong Kong, are exposed
to a wide array of teaching strategies that differ from what
they experienced during their secondary and higher
education in China: They are compelled to compare and
contrast their former learning experience in the Mainland
which is mainly teacher-centered [5], to the more effective
and widely used student-centered approach. A study in
China shows that a majority of academics favor a teachercentered approach with an emphasis on rote learning and
memorization [6]. As the Chinese education system
emphasizes content delivery in large lectures [7], with
minimal interaction with and feedback from students, TAs
were not exposed to other sorts of teaching methodologies
or class activities and are therefore reluctant to adopt an
interactive student-centered approach in the classroom,
particularly in the Sciences subjects.
The third challenge is the English proficiency and
cultural awareness of non-local new TAs. Despite their
disciplinary expertise, new TAs often get poor teaching and
course feedback scores from Hong Kong undergraduate
students because of their unsatisfactory level of English,
(particularly spoken English), and their inability to properly
present content [8]. The forth challenge that the new TAs
face is „role transformation‟. The constant „juggling‟
between - student- and –instructor- roles is arduous and
very demanding [2], as it frequently involves seasoned time
management skills [9]. All these challenges are the main
reasons for low motivation among the new TAs, which is a
foremost challenge faced by the teaching team in providing
instructional training to the TAs.
II.
InsTAT
The training provided to the TAs in universities around the
world is often inadequate or not available. Torvi [10] reports
that only 40% of the institutions surveyed in the US offer a
training course to new TAs but not necessarily mandatory.
Among the remaining 60% of institutions that did not
provide any TA training, the most common reasons for not
offering it were the lack of interest from the departments
and students, and time constraints. Addressing the needs of
new TAs at CityU, especially to overcome the anxiety in a
classroom setting and to provide guidance on teaching, is
absolutely essential; it is important however to take into
consideration with factors such as when to introduce it and
how to structure the course to maximize its benefits.
An early introduction of InsTAT is absolutely crucial
according to the literature, particularly before any actual
classroom teaching. Mueller et al. [11] emphasize the
importance of an early provision of a strong pedagogical
foundation to TAs because the teacher development process
is gradual (scaffolding) and challenging. The earliness
improves TAs‟ self-efficacy, which then positively
influences teaching effectiveness as suggested by the survey
findings [12].
The InsTAT course, SG8001/ SG8001M: Teaching
Students: First Steps, is delivered in the local and remote
CityU campuses. The course content and the student‟s
evaluation are presented in the following two sections.
TEACHING STUDENTS: FIRST STEPS
Concerned by the difficulties faced by new TAs, the Office
of Education Development and General Education (EDGE)
at CityU starts to offer a 1-credit compulsory course
“SG8001/ SG8001M: Teaching Students: First Steps” to all
new research graduate students in Hong Kong main campus
(SG8001) and Suzhou branch campus in mainland China
(SG8001M). The purposes of the course are a) to provide
instructional training covering basic theoretical knowledge
and practical skills required from students to fulfill their
academic duties, and b) to engage them in conversations
about Learning and Teaching.
The course adopts an innovative multi-directional
engagement team teaching approach, extensively supported
by e-learning technologies. The course instructors are
award-winning teachers (three of them are Teaching
Excellence Award winners, one is a FIE New Faculty
Fellow). Taking attention span and active learning strategies
into consideration, a multi-directional engagement team
teaching technique designed in-house is used whereas the
main speaker changes after a few slides to keep the class
interesting and engaging [13]. A variety of e-learning
technologies, e.g., discussion board, automatic lecture
capture system, peer and self assessment, wikis and
plagiarism software, are adopted to engage students with
timely and multiple points feedback and to extend the class
experience beyond the contact hours.
I.
Session content
The session content of the InsTAT course SG8001/
SG8001M aligns with different components as postulated in
the literature, including cultural awareness, language
proficiency [14], practical, personal and professional
development skills [12]. Table 1 presents these five
components and the corresponding content in each session.
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TABLE I
SG8001/ SG8001M SESSION CONTENT
Component
Session Content
Cultural awareness /Context
Context for learning and teaching at City
University of Hong Kong, City University of
Hong Kong's student profiles
Language / Instructional
Presentation skills
techniques / Active learning
strategies /Course
development
Practical skills / Engaging
E-learning, 4-year curriculum issues
students outside the
classroom
Personal /reflective skills
Reflective portfolio
Professional Development
Integrating learning theories into teaching
Skills / Peer review /
using Outcome Based Teaching and
Assessment
Learning approach, obtaining feedback
from teachers and peers
II.
Multi-directional engagement team teaching
The teaching team designed a multi-directional engagement
team teaching strategy to engage course participants. It is a
critical issue as a) students only have to attend 5 face-toface classes on Teaching and Learning for which they have
no particular interest (low motivation), b) this is a
mandatory course to ensure attendance [15] and c) a „Fail‟
in the course would bar them from teaching at City
University (high stakes). This particular strategy showcases
high quality dynamic and collaborative teaching, in which
the teaching team members act as role models for the course
participants (social cognitive approach).
Teaching Team Member
Student
FIGURE 1
TEAM TEACHING MODEL USED IN SG8001/ SG8001M
Figure 1 shows the multi-directional engagement team
teaching strategy adopted in SG8001/ SG8001M. To expose
students to a variety of teaching styles and strategies,
trained teaching team members are strategically positioned
at different spots in the classroom to increase peer-to-peer
and student-instructors‟ interaction and participation. Team
members demonstrate that the course can be harmoniously
taught together, in a collegial atmosphere, without any
cacophony. A teaching team member (instructors and
SG8001TAs) can at any time (using signs to alert fellow
members), supplement, share his experience, tell a story, ask
a question, agree or disagree with another team member,
and initiate a discussion. The main speaker changes once
every 10-15 minutes to keep the class interesting and active.
One teaching team member is responsible for administering
the e-learning infrastructure so that instant student feedback
and questions (e.g., from the course Wiki, Discussion Board
or Twitter) can be gathered and answered during class or
online.
Every member of the team (including the three TAs
who successfully completed the course) helps in the design
of the content, has to master every part of each class and to
be able to present it to the audience. After each session, the
teaching team consolidates all student feedback from
classroom and from the online discussions to address
students‟ questions in a timely manner.
III.
E-learning support
The use of the e-learning technologies in this course falls
into the “central” category [16] of blended learning. Elearning platform is the critical utility to achieve most
learning goals in the course, and have a substantial impact
on student learning for a number of reasons, e.g. facilitating
active, interactive, and reflective learning [17]. There are
only five face-to-face sessions in this course. The course is
also taught in CityU‟s branch campus in China. The
decrease in physical contact hours was off-set by the
internet-based communication. Therefore, the use of elearning technologies is an indispensible part of this course
to support active, interactive, and reflective learning in a
number of ways, i.e. a) improving engagement and reducing
dropout rate [18], b) providing fast feedback during
assessment and c) enabling continuous collaboration
between peers. The use of e-learning technologies to support
the instruction could as well ensure the quality of instruction
[19].
This course adopts the Blackboard Learning
Management System, an institutional-wide e-learning
platform, as the backbone. Different add-on features in
Blackboard have been deployed, e.g., discussion boards,
automatic lecture capturing system, email, peer assessment,
and wiki, to enhance the learning experience and promote
online collaborative learning. About 80% of the students
logged into the Blackboard course site at least twice per
week during the semester, with discussion board having the
highest utilization rate among all add-on features.
As a way to promote reflective learning, Blackboard is
a very effective channel to distribute assessment feedback to
course participants accurately, effectively and individually.
The assessment feedback includes both summative (letter
grade) and formative (qualitative comments) components,
from the instructor as well as from the peers (anonymous
peer evaluation). Administrative workload is therefore
reduced significantly, which allows the teaching team to
provide prompt feedback. The teaching team strives to
release the feedback of every assessment task immediately
once instructor assessment or peer assessment is completed.
This could facilitate instructional change as “teaching
presence” is very important for effective learning
environment.
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Video technology is often the least used application in
learning management systems [20]. The teaching team,
therefore, has made it an effective channel to support
students‟ reflection in this course. One of the assessments is
a 10-minute teaching activity, which is video captured and
can be accessed by students through Blackboard. This
allows students to self-evaluate their own work after
receiving feedback from peers and instructor, to observe
fellow classmates in action and to contrast their own
performance with their peers, in order to reflect (future
improvement  feed forward).
EVALUATION OF SG8001/ SG8001M BY PARTICIPANTS
Evaluation of the InsTAT course SG8001/ SG8001M by
participants was collected from two sources, which could
reveal the effectiveness. The first source is through the
institutional Learning Experience Questionnaire (LEQ) with
open-ended questions, which provides an anonymous
channel for course participants to reflect on their own
learning experience on the course formatively. The second
source is the reflective portfolio, one of the coursework
requirements, submitted by every course participant one
month after the last session of the course. The reflective
portfolio covers aspects on what participants have
personally gained from attending this course, the overall
course experience, and areas for personal and professional
development. It also provides an opportunity to „project‟
themselves into their future teaching posts and reflect on
what they would actually use (or not) in terms of teaching
and learning activities or assessment tasks.
I.
Feedback on multi-directional engagement team
teaching approach
Among the options in the LEQ concerning the multidirectional engagement team teaching approach, “Good
Interaction” is reported to be the most valued one. The
„good teacher-student interaction‟ engaged students by
providing a relaxed and comfortable classroom experience,
fostering active learning, as captured by the following
quotes in the LEQ and reflective portfolio:
“This course creates an opportunity for us to think how
to learn and teach, how to integrate them, and more
importantly, how to make the process interesting and
fruitful at the same time. I especially enjoy the presentation
assessment, as it is an interactive assessment.”
“The atmosphere of this course is very good. Rapport
has been successfully built between instructors and
students.”
“All of the teachers are very conversant and humorous.
Every class is very comfortable. They teach through lively
activities.”
“I think more about the interaction of teacher and
student, not only for higher scores from the perspective of
student part. After taking this course, I think it's clearer to
me that what I should do if I am a teacher.”
“It is a breath of fresh air compared to the normal
technical subjects. I see it more as a professional
development course enhancing my skills and equipping me
for a better future.”
II.
Feedback on e-learning support
The first value of e-learning support, as expressed by many
course participants, was on promoting collaborative learning
outside the classroom. In the case of SG8001/ SG8001M,
limited face to face contact hours constrained teacherstudent and student-student collaboration: a) in some
occasions, research graduate students need to travel to
attend doctoral consortium, conferences and overseas
workshops and miss classes. b) our off-shore (Suzhou)
campus students kept in touch with the teaching team
through Blackboard and Skype. E-learning support is
therefore essential to facilitate class collaboration and
maximize learning opportunities when travelling overseas,
which is reflected by the following representative quotes:
“The online discussion… I thought it to be very efficient
for us PhD students who travel a lot. We can be involved in
the course through blackboard. It works for me at least.”
“We have many chances to discuss with each other and
put up with our ideas very freely.”
The second value of e-learning support is to foster selfreflection on teaching practice. Course participants had a
chance to review the classroom capture of their own
performance, as reflected in the following quotes:
“The course never over-runs. The presentation is
recorded and the video is put onto the web for the students
to look back. Looking back on the presentation video could
help the students understand their good/bad things more
clearly.”
The third value was on encouraging Chinese students in
reflecting on the dangers and unethical aspects of plagiarism
and academic dishonesty. For centuries, Chinese scholars,
poets, calligraphers and painters have praised „copying‟,
„reproducing‟, and „imitating‟ the works of a master, trying
to transcend it through careful observation and repetition.
Instead of using Turnitin plagiarism checker as a deterrent
only, students were asked to complete an online tutorial on
academic honesty (and sign a form) before submitting any
written assignment, submit a 90% draft of their reflective
portfolio assignment into the system to verify citations
(formative, not checked by course instructors) and submit
their final document for summative appraisal. The
introduction of Turnitin has resulted in a significant drop of
plagiarism cases in SG8001 (8% in 2009 to 0% in 2011).
DISCUSSION
The introduction of the multi-directional engagement team
teaching approach, an unorthodox but effective technique
developed in-house, as well as the interactive e-learning
support, into the SG8001/ SG8001M (Suzhou campus,
mainland China) compulsory InsTAT course for
engineering and computer science TAs at CityU generated a
significant number of interesting and positive outcomes for
students and staff, including a) facilitating motivation and
engagement with the course, b) promoting student-student
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and student-instructor(s) meaningful interactions, c)
fostering deeper levels of learning and reflection, d) having
compelling impact on course overall achievement.
This strategy was found particularly awakening. This is
condensed in the following words:
“In a word, I benefit a lot from the SG8001 course. It
will be very good for me when I may be a teacher in the
future and begin to teach students at school. After I took this
course, I understood the meaning of learning in a new way.
Learning is not only to get knowledge, it can also be thought
to be a relatively permanent change in a person’s
behaviors, and can also be experience. I have learned the
six C’s of motivation, though which, I know how to keep
students’ motivation high.”
“In order to make student motivated in class, I will
employ interesting learning activities to grab their attention
and inspire them to learn. Therefore, students in my class
may not feel uncomfortable and frustrated, and they can
explore meaning and knowledge, engage in critical thinking
and conduct their own experiments….I am grateful to all the
teachers of the course SG8001M and their guidance,
encouragement and support from the initial to the final level
enable me to develop an understanding of the essence of
teaching and learning.”
“The course is over but I am not going to stop learning
the skills and knowledge about teaching in an appropriate
way. This is the first time that I realize teaching is a serious,
constructive and interesting subject. You can learn while
you are teaching. This course inspires me to consider how
to be an effective, kind, helpful and acceptable teacher. I
want to talk about my ideas about teaching. “The teaching
method of team discussion is very useful to help students
solve problems.”
When the teaching team was left with very few options
when it had to deal with more than 300 graduate students‟
backlog in two semesters at two locations (Hong Kong and
Suzhou), course content, class strategies (synchronous) and
instruction had to be carefully considered, refined and
adapted to quickly induct new staff and incorporate an
asynchronous mechanism without downgrading course
quality. Team members discuss class plans and materials
together creating a sense of common purpose and collegial
dialog which in turn is translated later in class into seamless
interaction and harmony between them.
The multi-directional engagement team teaching
approach was also found to be very interesting by the vast
majority of students, as they were not accustomed to having
four teaching staff and three TAs (who were also allowed to
teach) acting in concert to present a class. Adapting to this
unconventional team teaching technique was probably not
easy to comprehend at the earliest stage of the course for
some mainland students as it pushed them to a) „rethink‟
their beliefs and attitudes towards learning and teaching
[21], b) immediately use or reuse knowledge (lectures,
online discussions, readings, peer and instructors‟ feedback)
while they might have been told in China to accumulate it,
internalize it and reflect on it before applying it [22], and c)
challenge their views on position of power within the
classroom or as Hofstede [23] calls it, the Power Distance
Index. It is difficult for mainland students, for instance, to
even think about undermining teacher‟s authority by
interrupting, questioning content or asking relevant and
constructive questions in class or participating in
discussions, avoiding thus any loss of face as reflected by
the students: “this question will be considered „stupid‟ by
my classmates and the teacher” and “my English is not good
enough, better to just remain silent”. Online discussions
however involve a larger percentage of student-student
(peer-peer) interactions and allow students to socialize, get
to know each other, „think through‟ topics and create
threads before formulating a question or posting an entry. It
gives them a sense of „security‟ and freedom to express
thoughts [24] as they are not „put on the spot‟ in class. After
two sessions (week one of the course) only, the combination
of intense classroom interaction and purposeful online
discussions transformed class atmosphere into a
spontaneous large scale discussion where students showed
increased interest in class activities and exchange of views,
almost free of language inhibition. These outcomes illustrate
the appropriateness and strong potential of the multidirectional engagement team teaching approach and the
abovementioned e-learning support for courses specifically
designed for novice teachers, where the syllabus structure
includes purposeful, aligned and well-planned blendedlearning activities.
CONCLUSIONS
TAs, as front line educators to support undergraduate
courses, play important roles in delivering quality teaching
in higher institutions. This paper reports the challenges and
solutions from designing to implementing InsTAT program
at CityU. Designing an InsTAT program is difficult and
challenging because a) altering TAs perspectives on
teaching and learning within 4 weeks is complicated, b)
motivating the unmotivated in terms of usefulness and
immediate take-away value of the course is demanding. To
a) demonstrate interactive teaching strategies and b) engage
course participants, the teaching team adopted a number of
innovative approaches, for instance, the multi-directional
engagement team teaching and extensive e-learning support,
in order to foster active participation and self-reflection for
continuous improvement. This innovative approach was
proved to be successful, and could be used as a role model
course on engaging students in the classroom, and
promoting self-reflective practice on teaching improvement
Results from LEQ and reflective portfolio are encouraging
in terms of shaping participants‟ new perspectives on
teaching and learning, and to foster long term reflective
practice for continuous improvement after attending
InsTAT.
Some directions for future research can be on the
effectiveness of our InsTAT experience with different
demographic backgrounds. Our experience with 5 cohorts
and more than 300 students in the past few months may be
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October 12 - 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD
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of interest for existing courses considering the adoption/
usefulness of e-learning features or/and for program
designers before they launch similar courses elsewhere.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Jingwen Zhang and Valerie
C. Yap for their permission to include text from their
reflective portfolios in this paper.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Kai-Pan Mark, 2010 FIE New Faculty Fellow, PhD
Candidate, Department of Information Systems (IS),
Teaching Assistant, Office of Education Development and
General Education (EDGE), City University of Hong Kong
(CityU), Vice-Chair, IEEE Education Society Hong Kong
Chapter, markkp@cityu.edu.hk
Dimple R. Thadani, PhD Candidate, IS, Teaching
Assistant, EDGE, CityU, dimplet@student.cityu.edu.hk
David Santandreu Calonge, Associate Director, EDGE,
CityU, lsdavids@cityu.edu.hk
Cecilia F. K. Pun, co-tutelle PhD Candidate, Department of
Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, CityU and Department
of Linguistics, The University of Sydney; Teaching
Assistant, EDGE, CityU,, fungkpun@student.cityu.edu.hk
P.H. Patrio Chiu, Education Development Officer, EDGE,
CityU, patrio.chiu@cityu.edu.hk
978-1-61284-469-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
October 12 - 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD
41st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
F2E-6