How and why do students cheat? Do students perform better if they create the course syllabus? Those were some of the questions that led to faculty pedagogy for the 2014 Teaching Partners program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
Teaching Partners at UW-Stevens Point are faculty and teaching academic staff who are paired and asked to begin a discussion about teaching and learning. With the assistance of their partner, they learn a process to help begin critically evaluating their own teaching practices. Partners are paired across disciplines to give them an opportunity to meet colleagues in a field outside of their own and to be exposed to new teaching perspectives.
The following are the resultant projects or publications that were created by the 2014 teaching partners:
- Toward Dialogic Teaching: Using an Optimal Learning Model to Foster Deep Learning: Kimiko Ott, School of Education
- Co-created course syllabus: Nikki Logan, School of Education
- Development of Mobile Web Apps for Accessing Course Content: Jodi Olmsted, School of Health Care Professions and Kele Anyanwu, School of Education
- Use Google Form to work on Group Projects: Ruixue Du, School of Business & Economics
- Faculty perspectives on academic dishonesty: How and why cheating happens: Tim Wright, School of Physical Education & Athletic Training
Completing its 20th year, the Teaching Partners program is led by co-directors of the Focus on Teaching and Learning program Donna Zimmerman and Kristi Roth. The 2015 participants recently completed orientation and are beginning with their projects which they will present in 2016.