Computer science (CS) departments rely heavily on graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), yet many departments struggle to provide effective pedagogical training, particularly for international GTAs who face additional cultural and communication challenges. While pedagogical training improves student outcomes, engaging GTAs with diverse career priorities in such training remains difficult, and resource constraints often lead departments to default to less engaging online formats. This experience report examines the implementation of a low-cost, in-person training program for CS GTAs using a flipped classroom approach that supplemented existing online modules. Our cohort of 34 international GTAs actively engaged with the training, which focused on grading practices, feedback techniques, cultural competencies, and common teaching scenarios. Survey data collected before and after training and midway through the semester revealed that participants found the training highly beneficial, with 94% reporting increased preparedness for their teaching roles. GTAs consistently applied learned skills throughout the semester, particularly in providing effective feedback (90%) and using rubrics (76%). The program's structure-requiring minimal faculty resources while yielding significant improvements in GTA confidence and teaching practices-offers a practical, replicable model for other CS departments seeking to enhance GTA preparation without substantial resource investment.

Computer science (CS) relies heavily on teaching assistants (TAs) who are often untrained in CS pedagogy. Existing research on CS TA training typically studies American undergraduate TAs at high-resource universities, ignoring the many universities that use graduate TAs, who are often international students, and that don't have the resources to implement the training strategies discussed in the literature. We describe our approach to implement graduate TA training in a high-diversity, low-resource context. We present a needs assessment, design, pilot test, and deployment of our training course, and discuss implications for other similar departments hoping to train their TAs.

Teaching assistants (TAs) for introductory computer science courses are most often responsible for providing feedback on student code. TAs, however, lack teaching experience and are rarely trained in how to give effective feedback that positively impacts student learning. The lack of training is particularly problematic when TAs are asked to give feedback in real time, e.g. during in-class coding exercises. We analyzed data from multiple semesters, where CS1 TAs and instructors provided written feedback on in-class coding exercises. Importantly, a very small percentage of feedback met our gold standard for high quality. This finding reveals a need for training TAs to provide more effective feedback in introductory programming courses.