Diamond Peer Teaching Internship
Diamond Peer Teaching Institute:
I was selected as one of 36 Diamond Peer Teacher Interns at Temple University for the Spring 2018 semester. The program serves two purposes: to provide interns the opportunity to teach at the university level and to provide students enrolled in these courses with supplemental instruction. As part of the internship, I enrolled in a 1-credit course. For the course, interns attended the Peer Teacher Institute in January, where professionals from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching lectured about motivation and learning, designing study sessions, and the role peer teachers. I wrote written midterm and final reports reflecting my experience as an intern throughout the semester.
Internship Responsibilities:
I was a Diamond Peer Teacher for MIS 2101 / 2901: Introduction to Information Systems in Organizations. I served as the coordinator between 20 Information Technology Assistants and professors in the department. I attended and assisted lectures sessions, held weekly office hours, organized Help Desk hours for assignments, evaluated assignments and in-class activities, and held exam review sessions for all sections of the class.
My peer mentor and I analyzed PT Biser exam reports to detect good and bad exam questions. I altered exam questions accordingly to help create better and more fair questions. Relative to other Fox core courses, the MIS 2101 course had fallen below the benchmark in class average grades, so I worked on eliminating all “E. None of the above” choices on multiple choice questions. This helped raise exam scores by about 2% on average, and brought the class to a more average ranking.
Professional Takeaways:
I enjoyed my internship because I gained teaching experience at the university level when assisting with class lectures. I also gained professional connections within the MIS department and at Ernst & Young, where I will be interning this summer. I enjoyed mentoring peers in the class as well, as the introduction class inspired me to switch my major to MIS. I was happy to assist peers with major specific work and schedule planning, and offer advice from my personal experience in the program at Temple.