Svec, E. V., & Astudillo, G., & Vargas-Vidal, L. E., & López, C., & Hidalgo, X., & Hilliger, I., & Baier, J. A. (2024, June), WIP: Evaluation of the Third Design Cycle of the Wellbeing Teaching Assistant (WTA): Understanding What Type of Cases are Served Through a Categorization Analysis  Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--48300

\bibitem{asee_peer_48300}
  Svec, E. V., \& Astudillo, G., \& Vargas-Vidal, L. E., \& López, C., \& Hidalgo, X., \& Hilliger, I., \& Baier, J. A. (2024, June), \emph{WIP: Evaluation of the Third Design Cycle of the Wellbeing Teaching Assistant (WTA): Understanding What Type of Cases are Served Through a Categorization Analysis}
  Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Portland, Oregon.
  10.18260/1-2--48300

Erick Vaclav Svec, Gabriel Astudillo, Luis Eduardo Vargas-Vidal, Carolina López, Ximena Hidalgo, Isabel Hilliger, and Jorge A. Baier.  "WIP: Evaluation of the Third Design Cycle of the Wellbeing Teaching Assistant (WTA): Understanding What Type of Cases are Served Through a Categorization Analysis".  2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 2024, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2024.  https://peer.asee.org/48300 Internet.  18 Apr, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_48300}
  Erick Vaclav Svec, Gabriel Astudillo, Luis Eduardo Vargas-Vidal, Carolina López, Ximena Hidalgo, Isabel Hilliger, and Jorge A. Baier.
  "WIP: Evaluation of the Third Design Cycle of the Wellbeing Teaching Assistant (WTA): Understanding What Type of Cases are Served Through a Categorization Analysis".
  \emph{2024 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 2024, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2024.
  https://peer.asee.org/48300 Internet.  18 Apr, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_48300
author = "Erick Vaclav Svec, Gabriel Astudillo, Luis Eduardo Vargas-Vidal, Carolina López, Ximena Hidalgo, Isabel Hilliger, and Jorge A. Baier"
title = "WIP: Evaluation of the Third Design Cycle of the Wellbeing Teaching Assistant (WTA): Understanding What Type of Cases are Served Through a Categorization Analysis"
booktitle = "2024 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2024"
month = "June"
address = "Portland, Oregon"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/48300}
number = {10.18260/1-2--48300}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Well-being is increasingly recognized as a key element to foster within higher education. In this context, our institution—a prominent engineering school in Latin America—has created the Well-being Teaching Assistant (WTA). The WTA is a member of the teaching staff who proactively contacts and follows up students struggling academically, using empathetic communication, and proposing flexibility actions when possible, without sacrificing the achievement of learning objectives. The implementation of the WTA has followed a multi-cycle design-based research approach.

In this work-in-progress paper, we report an evaluation of the third design cycle carried out during 2023, in which WTAs were incorporated into 52 courses. Specifically, our evaluation accounts for the analysis of cases reported by WTAs using a tracking software. Tracking allows cases to be classified according to labels that indicate the area of the requests addressed, such as academic aspects, mental health, and administrative requests, all from the point of view of students from different Engineering courses.

The systematic classification of cases is a new implementation that has been carried out during the last two academic semesters. This allows us to more effectively investigate the main problems of students and how to provide timely follow-up. The latter has been carried out in a pilot mode during the first semester of 2023 and systematically in the second semester of 2023 through a virtual platform.

Students served by WTAs have positively evaluated its implementation. We also discuss aspects related to the involvement of instructors whose engagement seems key to the success of the intervention. The overall interest of instructors in incorporating WTAs into courses has also increased, and we report on these data too.

AU  - Erick Vaclav Svec
AU  - Gabriel Astudillo
AU  - Luis Eduardo Vargas-Vidal
AU  - Carolina López
AU  - Ximena Hidalgo
AU  - Isabel Hilliger
AU  - Jorge A. Baier
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - WIP: Evaluation of the Third Design Cycle of the Wellbeing Teaching Assistant (WTA): Understanding What Type of Cases are Served Through a Categorization Analysis
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/48300
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--48300
ER  -