What is the Teaching Teams Program?

The Teaching Teams Program (TTP) emerged in 1998 as a grassroots collaboration of faculty and staff who wanted to mitigate the negative influence of large, passive classes on learning. The model's fundamental unit is the teaching team, which consists of the instructor, graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), if any, and peer assistants.

This collaborative unit works together to provide multiple levels of support both inside and outside the classroom to help students construct their own knowledge (active learning), develop fundamental skills necessary for academic and professional success, and build confidence working with the course material. The specific activities of peer assistants on teaching teams depend wholly on the participating instructors who adapt this PAL model to their curricula. For example, an instructor with a writing-intensive course may utilize the team to offer assistance specific to writing (e.g., peer-reviews, writing workshops), while a science instructor may utilize the team to support hands-on research projects both within and outside regular class sessions.

Peer assistants in TTP are called preceptors, a term that as far back as 1440 stood for an instructor or tutor.  We adopted this term for TTP's peer assistants to avoid direct comparisons with more traditional peer mentor and peer tutor roles. Our preceptors are most often students who are concurrently enrolled in the courses in which they serve on teaching teams. Consequently, their ability to be content experts is limited to their “just-in-time” command of the course material. On the other hand, undergraduates can be natural, effective facilitators, communicators, and listeners when given a chance to show other students how to learn and how to teach each other.

The Teaching Teams Program builds on this strength by promoting many other roles for preceptors, including group facilitators, discussion leaders, and assistants for hands-on research projects. Their in-class presence optimizes their opportunities to mentor classmates, clarify the instructor's expectations, and provide feedback to the instructor, and their motivation to succeed academically by helping others makes them highly visible and effective role models.

The University of Arizona Teaching Teams Program
Department of Planetary Sciences/Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
Kuiper Space Sciences 351 | 1629 E University Blvd, Tucson, AZ 85721-0092 | 520-621-3991 | ttp@u.arizona.edu | © 2004 Arizona Board of Regents



Last updated August 22, 2007