Students as Faculty Mentors: Reversing the Role of Teacher and Learner

Abstract

When it comes to understanding and using information technology, today's pre-service education students often know more about technology than their college professors or their field-based teachers in K-12 classrooms. University and K-12 faculty members, on the other hand, know more about teaching and learning than pre-service students and less about technology. By bringing these two groups together as student mentor-faculty pairs, both students and faculty members benefit from the expertise of the other. This panel will describe how the Faculty Mentor Program developed at the University of Vermont (an initiative of the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology [PT3] Implementation Grant) brings education students and university faculty together to support new ways of learning for both groups.