Teaching Teams Program

One appeal of PAL techniques is that they engage an existing, renewable resource, the students themselves, in pedagogically sound ways that benefit the education of all participants. Peer assistants also operate both within and outside the classroom, thus providing multiple levels of support in locations and at times that are most effective in supporting curriculum objectives. Another compelling reason to use peer assistants is that they are experts who complement the skills of their primary instructors. At any developmental level and age, there are many skills and behaviors that surround learning that primary instructors may not be the most qualified to deliver. A peer assistant may be better qualified to help students with basic social skills, interpersonal communication, study skills, and even foster confidence in the course material. According to Herbert J. Walberg, "PAL yields gains, not only in knowledge, but in positive attitudes towards the subject matter and intended behavioral skills" (Topping and Ehly x). Finally, peer assistants offer a cost effective approach to maintaining an accessible and diversified academic and professional support system because their part-time wages are typically at or just above the minimum rate. Moreover, peer assistants are quite willing to work for non-monetary types of compensation, such as academic credit in their training courses and opportunities to develop faculty contacts that could lead to compelling letters of recommendation and other valuable assistance and insight.

Although the pedagogical value of PAL techniques is rarely disputed, they are still not widely practiced. One impediment is setting up the infrastructure that is required to recruit and train peer assistants and coordinate their activities, especially in large-scale, institution-wide programs. Another sobering challenge is to maintain high levels of accountability for peer assistants' participation in the learning process. This means monitoring their preparation and attitudes and, especially, guarding against the dissemination of false information during their interactions with students. Finally, even when an institution's administrators and educators advocate the application of PAL techniques in classrooms, it is often difficult to convince more than a few teaching faculty to implement them. Teaching faculty, especially at large research universities, are often unaware of basic education theory and they rarely, if ever, browse the latest results in education research. Their preoccupation with their own research specialties competes with the increase in time that would have to be committed to developing PAL-based curricula. In addition, the prospect of taking on increased risk adds to their reluctance to introduce PAL into their courses.

Peer Mentors and Peer Tutors. We base our discussion, on two basic types of peer assistants: tutors and mentors. Peer tutors and mentors most often serve a specific discipline (e.g., math) or skill area (e.g., writing), but they are not necessarily attached to specific courses, hence they may not have detailed knowledge of an individual instructor's course content, requirements, and expectations. These types of peer assistants usually have already earned high grades in one or more courses in the subject area, and they are normally paid for holding scheduled office hours. Students needing help must seek out these peer assistants because they rarely have any in-class presence. In theory, it is often convenient to distinguish between these two groups of peer assistants and draw hard lines separating them into two different educational strategies. In practice, though, real students set up as tutors will often offer assistance above and beyond course content, such as giving advice on learning strategies and helping students navigate the institution's system.

Supplemental Instruction Leaders. This type of peer assistant is the foundation of the Supplemental Instruction (SI) PAL model that was developed at the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC) in 1973 (http://www.umkc.edu/cad/SI/Index.htm) and is now active at over 110 schools worldwide (reference TBD). Students are recruited and trained to be tutors attached to historically difficult courses (examples TBD). They work to ensure that students know the course content while also instilling study skills and learning strategies.

Preceptors on Teaching Teams. This variation of PAL, the Teaching Teams Program (TTP), is the focus of this book. The Teaching Teams Program emerged at the University of Arizona 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 provides 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 (OED Online). In more recent times, the word has acquired discipline-specific meanings, such as in the medical field to identify a physician that gives practical training to a medical student (OED Online). 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 four types of peer assistants reviewed above are compared below in terms of their potential impact on learning. We used Keimig's classification scheme, which classifies learning improvement programs in terms of two dimensions: comprehensiveness and institutionalization. In Raising Academic Standards: A Guide to Learning Improvement, Keimig describes a Hierarchy of Learning Improvement Programs that is made up of a continuum of four levels (20). Each of the four types of peer assistants listed above is associated with one of Keimig's levels below.

Level I programs on Keimig's continuum include isolated courses or activities that provide remedial academic skills and non-academic skill development, such as life and social skills. Level I programs may target certain populations of students, but they have little or no connection to specific courses. Peer mentoring programs often fall in this category.

Level II programs include centrally located campus peer tutoring programs that provide learning assistance to individual students. Peer tutors must deal with the needs of students from many different classes, so they are completely removed from courses and instructors. This keeps their assistance limited to content specific to the subject matter or discipline, as opposed to a course or assignment.

Level III programs offer course-specific peer tutoring activities, as exemplified with SI leaders. Supplemental Instruction leaders are assigned to specific courses and attend lectures, but student participation is voluntary and SI groups always meet outside of regular class sessions. Supplemental Instruction leaders deliver content specific to a course and serve as mentors to assist students with learning strategies.

Level IV programs have the highest impact on learning because comprehensive strategies are interwoven into the basic course curriculum. Level I-III programs operate outside the classroom and do not directly integrate skills back into the course. Keimig argues that in order to be fully effective, educators need to target the students where they are, in the classroom (25). Consequently, her Level IV programs function both inside and outside the classroom so skills and learning strategies are incorporated into the coursework. The Teaching Teams Program is a Level IV program. As full members of a teaching team, preceptors represent the essential in-class resource that is missing in PAL programs based on the other types of peer assistants in Table 1. This translates into educational benefits not available with other forms of peer assistance. Preceptors' out-of-class roles are also more varied and flexible than traditional peer tutoring structured around office hours.

Program History

The Teaching Teams Program officially started in the Fall 1998 semester in the Department of Planetary Sciences/Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, but the idea of engaging undergraduates as peer tutors and assistants was not in itself new because similar programs had been around for many years, both at The University of Arizona in departments such as Geosciences, and nationally with marketed programs such as supplemental instruction (SI). The Teaching Teams Program differs from most other efforts, however, because of its focus on general education instruction and its "just-in-time" strategy of empowering and training undergraduates as preceptors while co-enrolled in the courses in which they assist. These key features of the Teaching Teams Program allowed it to compete successfully at the national level for grant funds administered by the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE).

The "just-in-time" teaching teams model appears to have been initially developed at The University of Arizona in general education sciences courses in the Department of Planetary Sciences through the influence of Professor Hal Larson. He was simultaneously engaged in two seemingly contradictory endeavors: upgrading his department's stand-alone undergraduate laboratory courses with an instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation, and serving on a university-wide general education committee that was going to eliminate all traditional undergraduate laboratory courses from the new general education science curriculum. During 1996 when it became clear that hands-on research projects had to be creatively integrated into lecture courses in the new curriculum, Professor Larson started to explore ways in which this requirement could be implemented with peer assistants so he could continue to make effective use of his newly acquired student laboratory equipment and his department's undergraduate laboratory space. Soon thereafter, colleagues in his department independently began to adapt the "teaching team" idea to their courses, thus providing useful classroom experience at the department level.

In 1997, the University Learning Center hosted a series of meetings at which instructors pursuing similar strategies throughout the University were invited to meet each other and to share their experiences, thus beginning a dialogue that eventually led to the successful proposal submitted in 1998 to the U.S. Department of Education to support further development of the teaching team model. Professor Larson was the designated Project Director of this grant. This funding provided support to develop the training workshops and to award curriculum development grants. All program activities are discussed and implemented by a Council whose membership includes faculty, staff, and usually about eight undergraduate and graduate student coordinators. The program has grown each semester, now encompassing over 30 courses with about 230 preceptors who influence the learning environments of more than 4500 students.

A teaching team participating in a training workshop.

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Teaching Teams Digest

Fall 2005
Fall 2004
Fall 2003
Spring 2003
Fall 2002
Spring 2002: Issue 1, Issue 2
Fall 2001

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Teaching Teams Program Publications and Conference Presentations

Publications:

Judith E.Miller, James E. Groccia, and Marilyn S. Miller, eds. Student-Assisted Teaching: A Guide for Faculty-Student Teamwork. Bolton: Anker Publishing Co, 2001.(http://www.ankerpub.com/books/mil_gro_mil.html)

1. Larson, H. P., R. Menke, S. J. Tollefson, E. Harrison, and E. Berman. "The University of Arizona Teaching Teams Program: A 'Just-in-Time' Model for Peer Assistance." This chapter describes the just-in-time teaching team model.

2. Stover, L. A., K. A. Story, A. M. Skousen, C. E. Jacks, H. Logan, and B. T. Bush. "The Teaching Teams Program: Empowering Undergraduates in Student-Centered Research Universities." This chapter describes the teaching teams experience from an undergraduate student perspective. All coauthors are undergraduate coordinators in the program.

3. Wood, D. A., J. L. Hart, S. J. Tollefson, D. DeToro, and J. Libarkin. "The Teaching Teams Program: Transforming the Role of the Graduate Teaching Assistant in Undergraduate Education." This chapter describes the teaching teams experience from a graduate teaching assistant perspective. All coauthors are graduate student coordinators in the program.

4. Poulton, M., and J. Kemeny. "A Model for Integrating Technical Preceptors into the Classroom." This chapter describes using teaching teams to introduce technology into the general education curriculum.

H.P. Larson and L. Lebofsky 2001. "Close the Textbooks and Experience Space Science at The University of Arizona." Ad Astra 13, 21.

J. Libarkin, and R. Mencke 2001. "Developing Training for Undergraduate Peer Teachers in An Innovative Program in Undergraduate Education." Journal of College Science Teaching 31, 235.

Presentations and Professional Meetings:

"The Teaching Teams Program: A New Approach to Collaborative Learning." Presented by Jeni Hart, graduate student coordinator, at the American College Personnel Association National Convention, Washington, D. C., May, 2000.

Cosmos in the Classroom Symposium, Annual Meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Pasadena, CA, July, 2000. The contributions listed below were made by faculty and their preceptors.

a. "Using Teaching Teams to Create a More Interactive Learning Environment." Workshop presentation by H. P. Larson, L. Lebofsky, S. Ferris, and L. Stover.

b. "Effective lab Experiences on a Limited Budget." Panel presentation by H. P. Larson.

c. "Interdisciplinary Approaches: Special Courses and Topics." Panel presentation by L. Lebofsky.

d. "The University of Arizona Teaching Teams Program." Paper distributed to symposium participants by H. P. Larson.

e. "An Effective and Inexpensive Lab Experience Observing the Night Sky: Logs and Guided Inquiry." Paper distributed to symposium participants by L Lebofsky.

"Improving Teaching and Learning in First Year General Education Courses." H. P. Larson, K. Lutrick, and B. Perl. Workshop conducted at the First-Year Experience Conference, Houston, TX, February, 2001.

"The Teaching Teams Program: Enhancing General Education Science through Faculty-Undergraduate Collaboration." S. J. Tollefson, H. P. Larson, and R. Mencke. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, St. Louis, MO, March, 2001.

"Putting People back Into Education: A Learner-Centered Feedback Model." H. P. Larson, K. Lutrick, and B. Perl. Workshop conducted at the First-Year Experience Conference, Bath, England, July, 2002.

"University of Arizona's Einstein's Proteges Program." S. Hooks and M. Oxnam. Workshop to be conducted at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), January 2005.

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