The better we can learn to collaborate, the more everybody wins. We come up with better ideas together.
Dr. Shawna Thomas creates collaborative and inclusive classrooms. To achieve this, she has dedicated herself to learning about teaching techniques and is continuously looking to improve her students’ experience. Her commitment to teaching was recognized with the Provost Academic Professional Track Teaching Excellence Award at a ceremony on Feb. 19. Thomas was surprised and humbled by the award.
“I love teaching, and I love seeing the students grow,” Thomas said. “I’m glad that [the students] enjoy that with me.”
Active learning is a distinctive feature of her classes. Thomas has read studies indicating that the brain activity level of students sitting in a lecture is similar to people who are sleeping. Thomas wants her classes to be more engaging.
“When you’re sitting in lecture, someone is explaining how things work, you’re listening passively, and it sounds like it all makes sense. Then you get home, and it doesn’t make any sense because you never actually used and tried the material,” Thomas said.
Active learning allows students to test the material and check for understanding while they are still in class and can ask questions.
“I like active learning because it lets students experience the struggle and work through it while we’re all together instead of on their own later,” Thomas said.
Active learning has the added benefit of breaking up a long lecture. “Keeping someone’s attention for a lecture that’s 50 or 75 minutes long is tricky. Breaking it up every 10 to 15 minutes helps their learning and helps them stay engaged,” Thomas said. “I think it’s just more fun.”
Thomas encourages students to collaborate and solve problems together during class rather than feel like they are in competition with each other. She wants her classroom to be a safe place where everyone can learn and contribute. She wants her students to be teammates rather than rivals.
“When you get into the workforce, whether it’s industry or grad school, very rarely are you working on your own,” Thomas said. “You’re working with other people to achieve something together, so the better we can learn to collaborate, the more everybody wins. We come up with better ideas together.”
Thomas includes group projects in her classes to further encourage collaboration. Working as a team gives students an opportunity to develop skills they can’t learn from a book. Thomas believes it’s important for students to work with people with different views or expectations.
“People are messy, so teams are messy. And that’s okay,” Thomas tells her students. “We’ll get through it together.”
Thomas models teamwork by seeking out opportunities to collaborate with others.
“My favorite way to teach is when I have someone else who’s teaching the same class at the same time as me so we can bounce ideas off each other and try different things. We can talk about what went sideways and things that were surprising and good,” Thomas said.
She enjoys working with colleagues who are risk-takers because they come up with fun ideas and challenge her to try new things.
“I think everyone benefits. I know my class is certainly better from the ideas of my colleagues than it would be if I tried things on my own,” Thomas said.
Robert Lightfoot, associate professor of practice in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has co-taught with Thomas and offers his congratulations to her. “Collaborating with Shawna is a true pleasure, from co-teaching classes to crafting papers together. Her dedication to the students and excellence is inspiring," he said.
Thomas, whose mother was an elementary school teacher, has been interested in teaching from a young age. But she also liked math and science, so she decided to pursue engineering instead of teaching. After grad school, Thomas worked as a researcher in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M. When an opportunity came up to teach Design and Analysis of Algorithms — a class she loves — she decided to give it a shot. At first, she was nervous to teach at the college level. However, she quickly found that she loved teaching.
Thomas advises her students to be open to twists in their career journeys. She said that students tend to pressure themselves to have their careers completely planned out. Thomas encourages them to take some of the pressure off and be open to unexpected opportunities. Her teaching-focused faculty position didn’t exist when she was a student.
“If I had put my blinders on, I would have totally missed out on getting the job I have now, which I really love,” Thomas said. “Try to take a breath, exhale, and keep your options open because maybe your dream job doesn’t exist yet.”