title: "Inside the Mind of a CS Undergraduate TA: A Firsthand Account of Undergraduate Peer Tutoring in Computer Labs"
authors: Julia M. Markel and Philip J. Guo
venue: ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE)
year: 2021
footer: "<font color=\"#AA0000\">Best Paper Award</font>"

abstract: >
  As CS enrollments continue to grow, introductory courses are employing
  more undergraduate TAs. One of their main roles is performing
  one-on-one tutoring in the computer lab to help students understand
  and debug their programming assignments. What goes on in the mind of
  an undergraduate TA when they are helping students with programming?
  In this experience report, we present firsthand accounts from an
  undergraduate TA documenting her 36 hours of in-lab tutoring for a CS2
  course, where she engaged in 69 one-on-one help sessions. This report
  provides a unique perspective from an undergraduate's point-of-view
  rather than a faculty member's. We summarize her experiences by
  constructing a four-part model of tutoring interactions: a) The tutor
  begins the session with an initial state of mind (e.g., their
  energy/focus level, perceived time pressure). b) They observe the
  student's outward state upon arrival (e.g., how much they seem to care
  about learning). c) Using that observation, the tutor infers what
  might be going on inside the student's mind. d) The combination of
  what goes on inside the tutor's and student's minds affects tutoring
  interactions, which progress from diagnosis to planning to an
  explain-code-react loop to post-resolution activities. We conclude by
  discussing ways that this model can be used to design scaffolding for
  training novice TAs and software tools to help TAs scale their efforts
  to larger classes.

bibtex: >
  coming soon!