Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education

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Fall 2013

In This Issue:

I. Introduction, in which Alison Cook-Sather, Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor of Education and Coordinator of The Andrew W. Mellon Teaching and Learning Institute, reflects on three principles — respect, reciprocity, and responsibility — that are essential to the development of participatory cultures and practices. She presents an overview of the each essay in this issue, which focuses on how participatory cultures and practices emerge when faculty and students work together in mixed-role partnerships and in the development of various pedagogical uses of technology.

II. Practice, Practice, Practice: Building Online Tools to Help Students Master Skills, in which Selby Cull, Assistant Professor of Geology at Bryn Mawr College, presents several on-line forums she has developed in partnership with student consultants and colleagues to support active, student-directed learning in her courses.

III. Teaching and Learning in Digital Contexts: Undergraduates’ Perceptions of Themselves and their Professors Collaborating an a ‘Participatory Culture,’ in which Sandra Lawrence, Professor of Psychology and Education, Mount Holyoke College, explores what happens when faculty and students come together in collaborations involving technology and learning outside of formal mentoring programs.

IV. Collaborating on Integrating Technology into Teaching, in which Ken Koltun-Fromm, Professor of Religion, and Miriam Pallant, Student Consultant, Haverford College, ’14, present a dialogue through which they discuss their experience of collaborating to integrate iPads into one of Koltun-Fromm’s courses.

V. Partners As Newcomers: Mixed-Role Partnerships As Communities of Practice, in which Mark Meacham, Williams High School, Maggie Castor, Elon University ‘12, and Peter Felten, Elon University, offer two case studies of mixed-role partnerships, one between a secondary school and the university and one within the university. They also raise questions about how best to welcome and support newcomers into communities of practice and mixed-role partnerships.

VI. Legitimizing Student Expertise in Student-Faculty Partnerships, in which Hayley Burke, Bryn Mawr College ’15, analyzes the importance of recognizing and treating students as among those with expertise on learning and critical insights on teaching.