Table 4 Semi-structured interview protocol used for LA interviews
From: Characterizing facilitation practices of learning assistants: an authoritative-to-dialogic spectrum
Purpose of interview portion | Example questions |
|---|---|
Ask these questions in the beginning about the entire lecture | |
Open beginning | How did the lecture go? What strikes you about it? (Alternative: How do you feel about it?) |
LAs’ overall purposes for interactions | What was your overall purpose in interacting with the students during this lecture? |
Watch video clip of LA–student interaction, then ask questions, do this for each video clip selected for the interview | |
LAs’ noticing & interpreting | What do you know about the students in this interaction and what did you notice about them when you had the interaction? Follow-up (if they don’t talk about student reasoning): What did you notice about the students’ thinking? What were you responding to with your statements? |
LAs’ in-the-moment purposes for interactions | Why did the students work on this problem; what was the purpose? So, what did you do and why did you do it? |
LAs’ interpretations of in-the-moment learning | What do you think the students learned during this interaction? |
LAs’ perceptions of rules and contradictions | How did you decide what group to interact with? How did you decide when to jump in? What do you think the professor and the students expected of the interaction? (Possible follow-up: Where did you know these expectations from?) Does this match up with what you think is best for learning? |
LAs’ perceptions of division of labor and contradictions | What do you see as your role in this interaction? What about the students? (If interviewees ask what we mean by role: You know like in a play different people have different roles, and it’s kind of like that in the lecture, everybody has different roles.) |
LAs’ perception of the integration of this interaction into the whole class | What do you think students get out of the breakout room that is different from the lecture? And what do they get from the lecture that is different from the breakout rooms? What is your role in facilitating that? |
Ask these questions in the end after you have shown all selected video clips | |
Open end | Anything else you wanted to share? |