University of Kansas

The team at the University of Kansas provided the overall TRESTLE project leadership while also implementing their own local interventions. The TRESTLE initiative was led by Drs. Andrea Follmer Greenhoot (PI), Caroline Bennett (co-PI), Mark Mort (co-PI), and Blair Schneider (Postdoctoral Fellow).

Post-doctoral experts (Teaching Fellows) were embedded in seven departments (Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Film & Media, Geology, Math, Physics, and Psychology) and the School of Engineering (Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; Aerospace Engineering; Chemical and Petroleum Engineering; and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science). The Teaching Fellows collaborated with department faculty, bringing knowledge, support for reflective practice, and practical support for the implementation and assessment of new practices.

The Teaching Fellows build communities of engaged faculty, staff, and students within their departments by providing training opportunities for instructors on how to utilize undergraduate teaching assistants in the classroom, leading reading and discussion groups, and presenting on department-level course redesign efforts.

Individuals from across campus met monthly at the C21 Consortium to share ideas and work together on course redesign efforts. Each year, course transformation work and results were made visible at an annual poster session (Celebration of Teaching) highlighting course redesign efforts across campus. We also collected Teaching Fellow semester reports documenting the impact of course redesign on student learning, and repositories of learning modules to sustain department work.