The Brown Learning Collaborative is a cornerstone of these efforts. The idea draws upon research that suggests that peer-to-peer instruction dramatically improves student performance and retention. It also draws upon the Office of the Dean of the College's emphasis on providing curriculum-based educational support programs that help students achieve new levels of excellence in six key skills traditionally honed in a liberal arts education – critical reading, writing, research, data analysis, problem solving and oral communication.
The Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning
Learning Collaborative
The Learning Collaborative builds upon and strengthens the faculty-student partnership that is central to the Open Curriculum and undergraduate education at Brown. Through their active participation in teaching and curricular development, student Fellows simultaneously enrich their peers' learning and deepen their own understanding of the subject matter at hand.
Structure of the Learning Collaborative
The Brown Learning Collaborative will scale up peer-to-peer teaching and learning, building on the success of Brown’s renowned Writing Fellows Program. Students who apply to be Fellows take a course, developed by the Sheridan Center, in which they will learn the theory and practice of teaching and learning in one or more of the six core skills. Fellows then partner with faculty to provide personalized assistance and feedback to enrolled students, and they will receive ongoing professional development from Sheridan. The Fellows will work in a range of courses across the curriculum, from the life and physical sciences to the humanities and social sciences.
The Collaborative also hosts a complementary initiative, bringing together faculty and graduate students to reflect on their own teaching. These initiatives focus on evidence-based course re-design around the same core skills, and also address how best to leverage the participation of the peer educators in their own courses. Periodically, the communities of faculty, TAs, and undergraduates come together to work in course-planning teams. This creates a model of intergenerational teaching teams, where knowledge and ideas flow back and forth among faculty and students.
Currently, the University is engaged in four Learning Collaborative initiatives:
Impact of the Learning Collaborative
The Brown Learning Collaborative expands upon Brown’s deeply held commitment to a student-directed liberal arts education and defines for students and parents the tangible benefits of such an education. Both Teaching Fellows and the students with whom they work will come to see skill development as a continuum and be better able to delineate how proficiency in each area will help them become flexible, agile learners with skills to succeed professionally.
Further, in enhancing professional development for faculty and graduate students, the Learning Collaborative will build stronger bridges between undergraduates and those from whom they learn. It will also allow Brown to leverage all tiers of expertise in future curricular planning, ensuring that each course is successful in giving undergraduates the knowledge and training they need to pursue their professional goals.
Learning Collaborative Outcomes
Outcomes of the Brown Learning Collaborative have been published here:
- Peter Felten and Leo Lambert. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How human connections drive success in college. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Wright, M. C., Mandel, M. S., Metzler, J., & Smith, C. (2020). Intergenerational partnerships to support liberal learning goals. In W. Moner, P. Motley, & R. Pope-Ruark (Eds.) Redesigning liberal education: Innovative design for a twenty-first century undergraduate education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.