Cultivate Teaching Support with a Cohort
Join, or create, a Teaching Development Cohort for teaching support and development!
Guidelines
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Eligibility
Anyone who teaches is eligible to participate in a Teaching Development Cohort.
Cohorts may consist of all, or a blend, of full-time instructors, part-time (adjunct) instructors, and Graduate Teaching Assistants/Associates.
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Cohort Formation
An ideal size for a cohort is 3-5 instructors. More than this makes scheduling meetings challenging, and fewer does not allow for enough cross-pollination of ideas.
Cohorts can be formed in one of two ways:
- Find interested teaching colleagues that you already know and recruit them to be in your cohort. Colleagues can be all in one department or college, or can be from across campus.
- Indicate your interest to the CTE to be a member of a cohort. We will work to group you with other interested colleagues. This is very likely to be a cross-curricular group - which has definite benefits!
Request placement in a cohort or register your own cohort by September 1 in order to meet cohort agreements for the academic year.
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Cohort Agreements
Cohorts agree to:
- Meet twice per semester (fall, spring) of the academic year.
- Cohorts schedule their own meetings, based on their members' time and availability. Plan on meetings that last approximately 1 hour.
- Cohorts are encouraged to schedule these meetings well in advance, so they aren't forgotten or difficult to schedule later.
- Participate in at least one CTE professional development event prior to each meeting.
- The event does not need to be identical for all cohort members; it can vary depending on member schedule or accessibility.
- The event can be in-person or online (sychronous or asynchronous). The CTE offers some D2L workshops as well as pre-recorded sessions for viewing.
- Remember that the CTE does its best to track your participation in all of its learning events, so participating in these PD events will also be credited toward your teaching development.
- Arrange and conduct at least one observation of each cohort member.
- Each cohort member should be observed once by at least one other cohort member at some point during the academic year.
- Observations can be just that - informal observations. Feedback to the instructor is optional, but encouraged. Meaningful feedback not only is formative for each member, but can be uploaded as documentation into Watermark, and may count toward teaching progress for some cohort members' tenure or promotion requirements.
- See optional Peer Feedback document, below.
- Send light meeting updates to the CTE following each meeting.
- See form, below, for these entries.
- This brief documentation helps us to know that you are meeting and what topics of interest are under discussion or are top-of-mind for our instructors.
- Provide the CTE with feedback about this cohort model at the end of the academic year.
- We want to get this right. Your feedback will help us make needed adjustments to ensure future success of our Teaching Development Cohort program.
- Meet twice per semester (fall, spring) of the academic year.
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Cohort Resources
At meetings, cohorts are encouraged to discuss:
- What was learned from the PD each member attended.
- Any a-ha information?
- Has anything been tried, or planned for, based on what was learned in the PD?
- Share any teaching problems with the cohort for group brainstorming and problem-solving.
- Share any teaching successes or new thoughts/ideas about teaching.
- Make teaching commitments with/to one another and follow up on them at the next cohort meeting.
Document meeting progress here. Please have one cohort member complete after each meeting:
Optional: Peer Feedback Single-Point Rubric
- This rubric is based on key takeaways from our 4 Teaching Essentials workshops.
- Please note that this is considered feedback (how are you doing?) not an evaluation (is what you're doing good or bad?). Our teaching is always changing and moving forward!
- IMPORTANT: On a single-point rubric, feedback on EACH side of the rubric item should be provided
for ALL points observed. That is, the observee should expect, for each item, to learn
what they are doing well and how they can continue to develop.
- This approach keeps us from having our feelings hurt by receiving feeback about needed progress, as it is given for everything.
- What was learned from the PD each member attended.
Support & Benefits from the CTE
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Cohort Formation Support
The CTE will help create cohorts for people who are not able to form a cohort, or who would like a cross-curricular cohort but need to be connected. -
Cohort Meeting Support
For one of the two meetings each semester, the CTE intends to support the cost of a lunch at the Dining Hall for your cohort. The CTE is currently in the process of determining the best process to make this happen, likely through the use of vouchers available from the CTE. -
Cohort Development Support
If the cohort requests it, and provides enough advance notice, a CTE representative will attend one of the 4 annual cohort meetings to partner with the group and provide consultation on a requested topic. -
Cohort Documentation
For cohorts who successfully complete the agreements for the academic year, the CTE will issue each cohort member a letter of recognition for their initiative and participation in the Teaching Development Cohort program. This letter can be uploaded to Watermark as evidence of teaching professional development. -
Professional Development Credits
In addition to documentation of the time spent participating in each CTE PD event (in preparation for cohort meetings), cohort members will receive 1 CTE credit (indicating approximately 1 hour of learning time) for each cohort meeting they attend, documented on their end-of-year CTE record.
This record is sent to each ETSU employee or graduate student who participates in any CTE events for the academic year.