Celebrating Excellence: Texas A&M Instructors Awarded for Teaching Innovation with Peerceptiv
Congratulations to Texas A&M instructors Dr. Asha Rao and Dr. Shawna Thomas on being selected for the 2023-2024 Provost Academic Professional Track Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. This prestigious award celebrates Texas A&M faculty who provide students with meaningful learning experiences, embrace innovative teaching approaches, and prioritize student-centered learning.
Dr. Asha Rao: Engaging Non-Majors in Biology
Dr. Asha Rao, an instructor for Essentials in Biology, has effectively integrated Peerceptiv into her biology course designed to provide an overview of essential biological concepts and their application to real world and contemporary issues for non-majors. In this course, students read and summarize scientific journal articles and then engage in peer-review, assessing the summaries of three classmates. This approach enhances students’ understanding of scientific literature while developing their critical thinking and analytical skills. By reviewing their peers’ work, students gain diverse perspectives and improve their own scientific communication abilities.
Dr. Shawna Thomas: Enhancing Team Collaboration in Computer Science
Dr. Shawna Thomas teaches Senior Capstone Design, a project-based course where students develop system integration skills to solve real-world problems in computer science. Throughout the semester, students participate in significant team software projects that require design, implementation, documentation, and demonstration.
“I have found Peerceptiv to be really valuable for supporting team collaboration in my project-based learning courses, both for students who are intermediate collaborators (junior-level) and students who are more advanced collaborators (graduating seniors),” says Dr. Thomas. “It does a few big things for students: 1) it gives them a more comfortable platform for giving peer feedback on collaboration performance and later- launching difficult but necessary conversations, 2) it gives them timely feedback from their peers that they are then able to act on, and 3) it gives me insight into team dynamics happening outside of the classroom so I can better coach individual teams throughout the course,” she explains. “I appreciate the ability to customize rubrics and to make the assignments [graded based on] completion only which I use to support a growth mindset in my students.”
Congratulations!
Peerceptiv is proud to support innovative educators like Dr. Asha Rao and Dr. Shawna Thomas who are dedicated to enhancing learning experiences through student collaboration. Recipients receive a $5,000 cash stipend from Texas A&M University Center for Teaching Excellence to support teaching innovations, teaching-related projects, and teaching activities that enhance student learning.
Congratulations to both instructors! Peerceptiv is honored to support innovative instructors at Texas A&M and universities around the globe. For more information or to get started with Peerceptiv, contact info@peerceptiv.com.