Students are the ones who have to use the learning they do in the classroom, so why not make that learning more engaging? That is the question Merrimack College faculty with the Teaching Excellence Advancement Challenge (TEACH) program’s active pedagogies cohort are working to address.
Through workshops and sessions, cohort members like Stephanie Garrone-Shufran, associate professor in the School of Education and Social Policy, are sharing with colleagues ways to get students out of their seats, away from their computers and collaboratively doing the work of learning.
“We’re not saying faculty should never lecture because there is a place for lectures,” explained Garrone-Shufran, winner of the 2024 Merrimack College Roddy Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. “But then there are times when we’ve got to get students up and moving around and doing the thinking.”
Across three faculty workshops she is leading, Garrone-Shufran is focusing on cooperative learning strategies. As opposed to group work, she explained, these strategies ensure participants’ interpersonal aspects are woven into the work, and participants learn how to support each other, settle conflict and disagree.
“In one of the workshops, we had faculty participate in a Write Around,” Garrone-Shufran said. “You pass a piece of paper around and write one line of a story. It is interesting because we had faculty from all different disciplines working together. I intended to show you can do this with a story or a math problem or other projects.”
In addition to benefiting students, Garrone-Shufran said more active learning can provide faculty with real-time examples of how students are responding to the material.
“At the end of a class or the end of a week of teaching, it can feel like you were the only one who talked,” she said. “So how can I, as the teacher, be less tired and the students be more responsive? These strategies also say to students that learning is their responsibility.”
Launched in 2024, TEACH brings together faculty, librarians from McQuade Library and staff at the Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation, Development & Design to combine expertise to develop new ideas and methods on how Merrimack students are taught. In addition to active pedagogies, TEACH cohorts are examining enhanced undergraduate research opportunities, harnessing generative AI to advance learning and developing novel interdisciplinary concentrations for the new general education core.
Garrone-Shufran said she believes the strategies and resources the cohort is providing can be adjusted to meet the needs of the course, students or faculty.
“Whether you have first-year or graduate students, whether you have students in the life sciences, business or the arts, I want faculty to see these teaching strategies as not discipline-specific,” she said.
