About Tandem
Tandem lets instructors build teams that foster collaborative and inclusive teamwork.
Created by experts at the University of Michigan, Tandem is a tool that facilitates equitable, high-performing teams. Available to integrate into common learning management systems, Tandem serves students and instructors at leading colleges and universities in the United States.
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Launched in
2019 -
Over
2,000 teams
supported -
Nearly
10,000 students
served
Our Story
After ten years of teaching a team-based, introductory engineering course, three faculty members at the University of Michigan felt burned out and overwhelmed. While they made efforts to connect with students and provide impactful interventions when things got tough, they still couldn’t reach each student in these large intro courses in meaningful ways. That’s when Robin Fowler, Laura Alford, and Stephanie Sheffield connected with the Center for Academic Innovation to create a tool to explore ways to achieve their goal of creating more equitable, high-performing teams in their courses. In 2019, Tandem was launched.
Our Faculty Innovators
Robin Fowler
Teaching Professor in Technical Communication, College of Engineering
Robin Fowler is a Teaching Professor in Technical Communication and an Engineering Education researcher at the University of Michigan. Her teaching is primarily in team-based engineering courses, and her research focuses on equity in communication and collaboration as well as in group design decision-making (judgment) under uncertainty. She is especially interested in how power relationships and rhetorical strategies affect group judgment in engineering design; one goal of this work is to understand factors that inhibit full participation of students who identify with historically marginalized groups and investigate evidence-based strategies for mitigating these inequities. In addition, she is interested in technology and how specific affordances can change the ways we collaborate, learn, read, and write. Teaching engineering communication allows her to apply this work as she coaches students through collaboration, design thinking, and design communication.
Laura Alford
Lecturer in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, College of Engineering
Laura Alford is a Lecturer and Research Investigator at the University of Michigan. She conducts research but her primary role is teaching courses like Intro to Engineering and Intro to Computer Programming. Alford grew up in Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, MI and came to the University of Michigan as an undergrad in the College of Engineering. Many years (and a few degrees) later, she’s still here — teaching, doing a little research on student teams and student experiences, and still bleeding maize and blue.
Stephanie Sheffield
Teaching Professor in Technical Communication, College of Engineering
Stephanie Sheffield is a Teaching Professor in Technical Communication in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. She currently teaches senior-level courses in Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in addition to leading one or two discussion sections for Engineering 100 each semester. Her research interests are focused on better understanding and improving the learning experiences of the students in her courses, with current emphasis on the ways in which students engage with online resources and student attitudes towards working in teams in DBT courses.
Powered by the Center for Academic Innovation
The University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation is committed to a future in which education connects and empowers all learners to reach their full potential throughout their lives. We collaborate across campus and around the world to create equitable, lifelong educational opportunities for students and learners everywhere. Our work spans curricular innovation, tools for student success and equity, educational research and analytics, and academic innovation policy.
Our Educational Technology team consists of talented engineers, UX designers, and behavioral scientists who work to create accessible, engaging, equitable experiences for students and instructors alike.