Learning Assistants (LAs) are defined as undergraduates who help facilitate active learning instruction in undergraduate courses. These students, who have previously shown mastery in the course they LA for, are trained to use evidence-based best practices, mentored for one hour a week by the course instructor, and assist in the classroom for at least one class period a week (Otero, Pollock, and Finkelstein, 2010). According to the learning assistant alliance (https://www.learningassistantalliance.org/), there are more than 100 learning assistant programs in existence today with the first one beginning in 2003 at the University of Colorado - Boulder.

 

In my lab, we are interested in better understanding how specific types of interactions between learning assistants and the students they are assisting effect student learning and future interaction levels. Specifically, we are interested in how the effect of students' negative behavior towards the learning assistants can be mitigated through using interventions.