Community Classrooms
What are Community Classrooms?
Even though many of us spend much of our professional lives thinking about and engaging in teaching, it is actually not common to observe others teach. Observing and being observed as instructors is one of the most powerful ways to improve your teaching mindset and skills. Community Classrooms (CCs) are classrooms where faculty open their doors to support our Teaching Observation Partnership (TOP) programs.
Why Participate?
Because class observations are not commonplace, many faculty feel uncertain about the process, leading to lower quality feedback and reduced learning. Community Classrooms help address this by providing a low-stakes environment for new observers to learn along side a mentor.
Your Role in a Community Classroom
As a Community Classroom faculty member, you agree to:
- Allow a new course observer and a course observation mentor to observe one of your classes.
- Reply to emails from interested faculty seeking to observe.
- Provide days and times you are available for observations and share relevant course documents (e.g., syllabus, assignments, access to Brightspace). Preferably, this will be in the first month of the semester.
That’s it! The goal is for the observee to work with their mentor to learn about the observation process and gain comfort in another classroom. No feedback or additional time commitments are required from you.
How much time will it require?
Because all you are being asked to do is open your doors to an observation, the time required is that involved in the emailing and coordination – less than 15 minutes!
Important Note: We aim to select a small subset of classrooms that offer diverse experiences for observers. Decisions are based on diversity of times, days, and features and have NO reflection on teaching quality. We then provide a list of CCs to our incoming observer cohort who self select based on their availability and interest.