Sharing the Responsibility for Learning

Faculty Comments

“Working with a Student Consultant gave me a sense of students being able and wanting to take certain pedagogical responsibility, and the counter of that is me taking a learning responsibility.”

“I’m constantly trying to think of ways I can put the pedagogical goals I have for my students in their hands.”

“I work with students in a more productive way, with a two-way dialogue which helps us explore different avenues in a train of thought. Instead of only me just telling the students what I think they should know, I mix lecturing with discussion. I try now to be more present to the NOW in the classroom and be open to where it is going than I used to be before, when I focused on just getting the students to know particular things.”

“I work with students more as colleagues, more as people engaged in similar struggles to learn and grow. I have become even more convinced that students are experts in learning and essential partners in the task of creating and developing new courses and refining existing ones.”

“It doesn’t mean that you are giving over control of the course. But there are elements of the classroom that we are co-responsible for, that we are traveling through together.”

Student Comments

“I no longer think that professors are responsible for having all the answers and making a class perfect and wonderful to suit my own needs. It is up to the entire community to make learning spaces function, so that means students have just as much responsibility as professors.”

“My role definitely began to break down the boundaries between student and teacher and created in-between roles in which I could recognize my partner and myself as both learners and teachers simultaneously. This perspective has influenced the way I see myself in my other classes, I am more aware of the classroom dynamics and teaching styles in all of the classes I am in now, and I consistently think of ways classes could be improved instead of just accepting them as static.”

“[TLI] is a wonderful opportunity to really get to know a professor well in a different capacity and to develop a different kind of professional relationship but also one that was personal; engaging in work together with them.”

“When you are in a college environment or any environment as a student, you think you are there to get a lot. And this has given me a lot of confidence in that I have a lot of things to give. I can give in terms of teaching others. I can give in terms of giving others ideas about how to teach others. And I don’t think I would have had that if I wasn’t involved in the TLI."

Continue reading: Participant perspectives from different programs