Teaching and Learning Team

The Teaching and Learning Team of the University Libraries focuses on the information literacy needs of Mason’s diverse undergraduate community.  With an emphasis on serving students throughout the Mason Core curriculum, the Teaching and Learning Team creates dynamic and engaging learning experiences, which promote critical thinking and enhance George Mason University’s teaching mission for creating a more just world. Through course-based instruction, on-demand workshops, and campus and community outreach, informed by iterative student learning assessment, the Teaching and Learning Team empowers undergraduates to succeed as students and community members.

Our core values inform how we enact our mission. These include:

• Inclusive learning – We support and provide accessible, student-centered pedagogies and practices. Collaborating with instructional faculty and campus partners, we promote active learning instruction to meet the needs of all learners. 
• Diversity and equity – We relentlessly cultivate diversity and equity. We affirm this commitment in our instruction, in our Team policies, and our discourse and action. Additionally, we recognize this as ongoing work and will work to continuously improve as a Team and as individual contributors.
• Informed pedagogy – Our teaching is informed by educational learning theories, the scholarship of teaching and learning, critical library pedagogy, and emerging scholarship related to information literacy instruction. We are committed to anti-racist instructional practices, as we believe informed pedagogy is integral to both inclusive learning and diversity and equity.
• Community engagement – We are committed to the greater Mason community, particularly its undergraduate population. Our work is informed by and engaged with our academic and co-curricular partners. We continually investigate new and emerging partnerships to expand our instructional outreach.
• Critical reflection – We value the need and time to reflect on our practice as a way to inform and enhance our work.  We reinforce this skill in our teaching.