Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education

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Third Issue: Spring 2011

In This Issue:

I. From The Advisory Board, in which Carmen Werder, Director of the Teaching-Learning Academy & Writing Instruction Support and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Communication at Western Washington University, and Shanyese Trujillo, an undergraduate at Western Washington University, reflect on “The Heart and Art of Collegial Conversations.”

II. Introduction, in which Alison Cook-Sather, Editor, and Coordinator of the The Andrew W. Mellon Teaching and Learning Institute, argues for a revision of traditional teacher-student relationships and pedagogical responsibilities and in which Guest Student Editor Anna Chiles describes her experience of working in the TLI.

III. A Semester In the Life, the final installment of the blog kept by Theresa Tensuan, Assistant Professor of English, over the course of a semester in which she wrote about the joys and challenges of her exploration into how to create a more culturally responsive classroom.

IV. Radical Equality: A Dialogue on Building a Partnership — and a Program — Through a Cross-campus Collaboration, in which Meredith Goldsmith, Associate Professor of English at Ursinus College, and Nicole Gervasio, a 2009 graduate of Bryn Mawr College, describe the process through which they built their working relationship and how they used their partnership not only to reflect on one of Goldsmith’s courses but also to build a student consulting program at Ursinus.

V. Let’s Scrum: How Scrum Methodology Encourages Students to View Themselves as Collaborators, in which Rebecca Pope-Ruark, Assistant Professor of English at Elon University, and three Elon undergraduates, Michelle Eichel, Sarah Talbott, and Kasey Thornton, explore an adapted version of Scrum project management methodology — a framework of group meetings and process questions used to organize collaborative teamwork and borrowed from the software development world.

VI. From the Student Perspective, in which Margaret A. Powers, a 2010 Bryn Mawr College Graduate who worked as a student consultant throughout her time as an undergraduate, offers “Reflections on Seven Core Principles of Facilitating Faculty-Student Partnerships within an Educational Initiative.”

VII. Teaching and Learning Insights, in which faculty members and student consultants define ‘confidence’, reflect on the role of confidence in teaching and learning, and articulate how their experiences through the Teaching and Learning Institute help to build confidence.