Teaching Communities

Every semester the OFCD organizes several teaching communities.  These are designed to facilitate faculty exchange on pedagogy.  They’re places for new and experienced faculty alike to gain inspiration, troubleshoot problems, elicit feedback on new ideas or assignments, and generally be a place to build a collegial environment that supports exceptional teaching on campus.

The call for new topic areas (e.g., faculty teaching big classes, faculty leading project-based classes, faculty with young children, faculty teaching gateway classes, etc.) will come first, about a week before the semester starts, followed by a call to sign up for that semester’s communities. 

Communities are intended to be supportive and dynamic—if you have a great group of people that wants to keep meeting for more than a semester, great!  If you had a great semester but want to join a new group the following semester, no problem.  Need a bit of a break and want to take a semester off, also fine. 

Teaching communities are intended to be low-commitment, high-reward opportunities to connect with colleagues.

The expected commitments for teaching community members are:

• Set some personal goals during related to what you hope to accomplish in your teaching during the semester, and discuss them with your group during the first meeting.
• The community should meet as a group at least four times during the semester.
• Conduct at least one peer-observation of a community member’s class.
• Invite at least one peer-observation of your own class.