Undergraduate Course Assistants

Overview

An undergraduate course assistant is a student who has recently taken a course and comes back to support the students taking it now, working alongside them in class and outside it. Programs built on this idea go by different names across institutions and disciplines — undergraduate learning assistants (LAs or ULAs), peer tutors, undergraduate teaching assistants — but the basic model is the same. At Cornell we call them course assistants (CAs), and that is the term we use throughout this project.

There are strong reasons to believe a CA program can be an effective way to enhance student learning. One-on-one tutoring has well-documented benefits, CAs can serve as relatable role models, and programs can scale by employing many CAs at once. Prior studies across disciplines also suggest positive effects. At the same time, much remains unknown, since CA programs differ widely in the responsibilities assigned, the training provided, and the ratio of CAs to students.

In Fall 2024, the Cornell Economics Department launched a CA program in its introductory economics courses. CAs facilitate in-class activities and staff a support center open most of the day, every weekday. CAs also complete a semester-long training course during their first term serving as a CA. Since implementation, we have gathered extensive data on both student and CA outcomes, which we are now comparing with pre-program data to estimate the program’s impact on students and the CAs themselves.