Christina Smith

Epistemological frames of graduate teaching assistants and instructors in studio-based engineering classes

Many engineering programs have recently seen a significant increase in enrollment and educators have turned to alternative teaching strategies to help cope with this increase. One such approach is to incorporate Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) led studios to complement lectures. We studied a chemical engineering department that has implemented a studio approach that provides students an interactive learning environment. In this exploratory qualitative study we interview Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and instructors to investigate their perceptions of the implementation of studios relative to the designers objective and their teaching experiences. From the latter, we infer epistemological frames based on their responses to: how they prepare for class as a student, how they prepare for class as a teacher, and how they deliver the studio content.