The LA's Role

Learning Assistants are undergraduates who have succeeded in their STEM courses and expressed interest in helping other students learn. They are recruited by faculty in science and science education. Selection of LAs is competitive, and LAs receive a monthly stipend for their work. The foundations of the LA experience are content, pedagogy and practice:

Practice: Facilitate Learning During Class

An LA’s primary role is to facilitate discourse and interaction among students in the supported course. This work occurs in different settings. In CU Denver classrooms, LAs facilitate interaction and discussion among groups of students during breakout problem solving sessions (e.g., during Think-Pair-Share activities, while students are completing sets of “clicker” questions) or in support of “flipped” class sessions (where lecture time is used to engage with material presented outside of class). LAs also help develop student-centered learning resources and activities to be used during lectures. Outside of class, LAs facilitate learning by holding drop-in office hours, answering emails from students, moderating discussion boards, creating instructional videos, and helping students develop study skills.

Content: Weekly Prep Meeting 

LAs must have successfully completed the course they support with high achievement. To help the LAs deepen their own content knowledge and provide a richer content-based context for the students in the supported course, they meet weekly with their lead faculty and:

  • reflect on the past week’s activities
  • plan for the next week’s lesson
  • discuss the content and materials under study
  • anticipate student ideas and questions
  • analyze student work.

Pedagogy: LA Weekly Workshop

First-time LAs take the “LA Weekly Workshop” Introduction to Science Teaching and Learning (SCED 4050/5050) while they are serving as LAs. In this workshop, they discuss learning theory, teaching strategies, formative assessment, promoting discourse, and students’ conceptions, all in the context of their specific discipline and their roles in the classroom. LAs learn about teaching and learning, in large part through reflecting on their LA experience.