Staff as Collaborative Partners in Teaching and Learning
Bryn Mawr College's Teaching and Learning Initiative is distinctive in the ways that it integrates members of Information Services (IS) into the process of developing excellence in teaching. Bryn Mawr is among those colleges in the country that have formed a merged organization within which library and Information Technology (IT) staff work together with faculty, students, and administrators. This merging allows the full complement of print and electronic library sources, of multimedia and visual resources, languages, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and the latest in technological advances to work with and for people in all ways (not simply electronic). Our goal is to move collaboration with IS staff beyond the tech support model according to which staff deal with equipment, troubleshoot problems, etc. and to involve staff members in thinking about the pedagogical goals of courses, how one might achieve those using particular technical tools, and how to support the use of those tools with other aspects of the courses.
One of the ways we facilitate this work is through a structure that endeavors to bring all these services together to faculty and students in their disciplines-- nodes. In addition, we have created a model of course development through which faculty work in collaboration with members of the IT staff and students to integrate technology into their courses in pedagogically meaningful ways.
A Closer Look at...
- Community Building In and Through Teaching and Learning
- Students as Collaborative Partners in Teaching and Learning
- Staff as Collaborative Partners in Teaching and Learning