Presentation description

Introductory physics labs provide fertile ground for students to engage with scientific concepts through hands-on, evidence-based inquiry. At the University of Utah, the redesigned Introductory Physics Laboratories for the Life Sciences (IPL2S) course aims to promote such engagement by establishing sensemaking as a central pillar of instructional design. In practice, however, students' opportunities for sensemaking vary significantly, often depending on the extent to which teaching assistants (TAs) and learning assistants (LAs) notice and build on emerging student thinking. Despite their integral role in facilitating laboratory instruction, many TA/LAs receive limited direct preparation in recognizing and supporting sensemaking as it unfolds in the moment.
To bridge this gap, this project developed a set of flexibly structured training exercises within a larger Instructional Ecosystem (IE) that address four foundational areas: community, pedagogy, sensemaking, and equity. Based on video studies of previous lab meetings, we had earlier identified moments in instruction in which student thinking was being productively supported or inadvertently steered off course. These insights guided the design of training resources such as reflective journaling, video vignette observation (on topics of the individual's choosing), and pedagogic-scenario discussion questions designed to encourage TA/LAs to attend to sensemaking cues and, in a timely and positive way, intervene.
Complements with the lab's three-week A-B-C teaching cycle for instruction, with a further emphasis on sensemaking during the time students progress from designing to defending investigations. The scale implementation is scheduled for Fall 2025, but this design time is a critical marker on the path toward enabling TA/LAs to understand student reasoning more consistently and equally. By helping teaching teams develop a sense of comfort with the processes of sensemaking as they unfold over time, this work enables more responsive teaching practices and more abundant, diverse learning in undergraduate STEM labs.