This experience has been found to be profoundly motivating and valuable to students afforded the reversal of roles. Students need guidance and support to build their confidence in learning how to express and convey their growing knowledge of technology to others. Training may include listening skills, interpersonal skills, and conflict resolution in addition to technical skill training. Faculty-student projects are structured around work with scholarly value, which, if sought, should merit academic credit. The work student assistants provide to faculty is offered in return for faculty teaching the student the reason why this work is meaningful or important to their discipline, course, or research.
Student assistants are part of a team.
Even when STA programs evolve into highly structured task specific units, student assistants are fundamentally there to help students and faculty better use technology for teaching and learning. We will build on the changes made in the current year to create a total of ten work groups. Each work group will have a well-defined sphere of responsibility and set of skills. The key training events will occur just prior to the start of the fall and spring semesters. We will provide four days of intensive and targeted training to the students in each of these work groups.