The College of Western Idaho (CWI) Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) hosted its second annual March Madness virtual training, March 9-19, which brought together Academic Transfer and Professional Technical Education programs for creative collaboration. This year’s training was turned into a friendly, collegial competition that put programs in head-to-head competitions of sharing classroom best-practices. The winners were determined through a faculty vote. The CTL is happy to announce the winner of this year’s March Madness training competition is the school of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
STEM won three resounding victories by sharing their ideas on best practices; from creating a safe and fun way to do student introductions to two wonderful ways to assess student understanding. CWI’s Executive Vice President for Instruction and Student Services, David Shellberg, presented the trophy to Assistant Dean Maia Kelley, Department Chairs Susan Aydelotte, Nicole Frank, and Willard Pack, and STEM Administrative Assistant Heidi Mackenzie on April 1.
Although STEM claimed the trophy, the real winners are CWI’s students as faculty shared and learned a number of new techniques meant to create engaging and positive learning environments. Jana McCurdy, Psychology faculty, commented, “I really enjoyed the format of this presentation. It was very helpful for me to consider each idea and which ones I could incorporate into my teaching… there are a couple of these I plan to try.”
The CTL would like to thank everyone who participated in the competition and congratulate STEM.