Teamwork & Collaboration for the Holidays
Our CTEI team hard at work creating the gingerbread house
Our fairly new Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI) at Rush University has hit the ground running with our teamwork and collaboration. Since our start as a department, we have continuously supported teamwork and collaborative efforts in working with Rush faculty to design dynamic courses and implement innovative technology into teaching.
The past several months, we have grown as a department with staff that contributes tremendously in our teamwork and collaboration. This is exemplified during this holiday season. For instance, we came together to participate in several Rush employee activities, among those are “Visions of Gingerbread Houses”, “Get Crafty with a Holiday Stocking” and “Adopt a Family Program”. We were engaged in these activities by connecting with each other and our workplace, each of us collaborating and contributing to the Rush holiday spirit with teamwork.
CTEI’s final gingerbread masterpiece
How does CTEI’s teamwork and collaboration trickle down to faculty? Hopefully, our engagements represent how faculty can engage students through teamwork and collaboration, not only with what they are learning, but in their learning environment. Rush faculty are educating our students not only to become talented and brilliant doctors, nurses and medical staff, but also to become engaged medical and clinical practitioners. More specifically, we encourage you to engage your students with activities outside the classroom as well as in, and become a role model for teamwork and collaboration.
Activities outside the classroom can be a coat drive or toy drive where you, as the faculty, lead them, encourage them, and take part too. Or perhaps, schedule an outing with your students where you and your students volunteer at a food pantry or soup kitchen. How can volunteering at a food pantry or soup kitchen relate to learning?
There are many way you can relate teamwork and collaborative efforts into learning. But I’ll give you one example. You can implement this activity in a nutrition and wellness unit. Have your students collaborate and come up with solutions as medical practitioners on how they can advise their under-served patients about the types of food that provide nutrition on a budget or places they can go if they need assistance. You will be teaching your students how to engage with patients and not just provide rote medical assistance.
There are many more collaborative and team oriented learning opportunities our team at CTEI can help faculty to develop in their coursework. In the end, we are all many threads that are sewn together to become the fabric of the Rush University team that are here to support and engage each other and our Rush students.
CTEI’s wrapping party for Adopt-a-Family
The aftermath! So happy for the families!