How Do Teaching Assistants Teach? Characterizing the Interactions Between Students and TAs in a Computer Science Course

Teaching assistants (TAs) play a crucial role in Computer Science courses. When a student is stuck or confused, they often rely on a TA to help them understand a concept or debug their program. At the same time, TAs in Computer Science courses are often very new at teaching, and somewhat new at programming. They may lack the knowledge and resources necessary to help students learn effectively. This work seeks to better understand the nature of TA-student interactions and identify potential opportunities for improvement. We conducted an observational study of one-on-one TA-Student interactions during office hours of a Computer Science course, and analyzed these interactions through the lens of known practices of effective one-on-one tutors. We found that TA-Student interactions focus on code over concepts, and this focus may be detrimental to TAs’ use of good tutoring practices.