Katia Ossetchkina (CivMin MASc student)
Teaching Assistant Award
Recognizing a TA who demonstrates excellence in classroom teaching, working with students, and the development of course materials.
Katia Ossetchkina, an MASc student in the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering and a 1T8 CivE alumna, was a teaching assistant across five undergraduate and graduate courses, serving as a lecturer, seminar facilitator and head TA.
Ossetchkina’s teaching aims to bridge the gap between engineering theory and practice, using systems thinking and storytelling to draw connections to industry. Her most significant impact has been in APS106: Fundamentals of Computer Programming, a mandatory first-year course where many students face programming for the first time, which can make teaching coding particularly challenging. To address this, she co-created weekly one-hour Design Problem lectures, where students programmed solutions to real-world problems, from simple linear solvers to coding Wordle from scratch. She designed and delivered these lectures, which have since been integrated into the course curriculum.
Ossetchkina also led the development of the Data Analytics and Visualizations for Educators (DAVE) platform, a data-driven framework for weekly student feedback. DAVE supplied near real-time insights about student learning and comprehension, allowing the teaching team to quickly pivot and adapt their teaching. She presented DAVE at the 2023 EdTech Symposium and co-authored a paper with the Canadian Engineering Education Association.
By Carolyn Farrell
This story originally published by Engineering News