Our office is excited to be partnering with the College of Arts & Science’s Academic Affairs team for a second year to offer the Teaching Squares peer observation opportunity in Spring 2025.
Teaching Squares is a non-evaluative, informal peer observation program that has been used for more than two decades at many different types of higher ed institutions. Instructors are organized into small groups of three or four, based on their course types, sizes, and academic division (Social Sciences, Humanities, or Science). Ideally, these groups will also be cross-departmental. Instructors will take turns visiting each other’s classes, and sharing ideas, tools, and strategies for enhancing their teaching.
The time commitment involves:
- Attending a one-hour orientation session
- Attending one class for each of your two or three groupmates over the course of the spring semester
- Meeting for a group discussion over lunch or coffee (we’ll pick up the tab!) twice during the semester
- Writing a one paragraph reflection on the experience, to be shared among the group, on what you learned and how you might apply it in your teaching in the future.
Faculty members tell us that their peer networks are their most trusted source of information and support, but that sometimes these can be hard to build and sustain. The Teaching Squares program aims to take care of the administrative elements of network formation so that participants can focus instead on connecting with their colleagues and reflecting together on their teaching. There’s also an inherently social angle to these connections that we want to support by paying for coffee or lunch twice in the semester.
Finally, we want to facilitate recognition and reward for participants’ professional development efforts. We’ll provide everyone who completes the Teaching Squares program with a Letter of Completion, suitable for inclusion in teaching portfolios and renewal packets, that documents the details of their work.
If you are interested in participating, please fill out this Google Form by Friday, December 6, 2024. Please list all of the courses you will be teaching in Spring 2025 for which you would like to participate in Teaching Squares. We hope to accommodate everyone who applies, but participation will depend on a sufficient number of applicants in similar fields and course types.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Teaching Squares, please reach out to Lucy Appert in TEI or John O’Hara in the CAS Office of Academic Affairs.