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MCC Daily Tribune

TCC: One-on-on Teaching Consultations Available to All Faculty

As we begin the 2021-22 academic year, the Teaching and Creativity Center (TCC) is here to support your growth as a teacher through one-on-one consultations.

We have a number of faculty members trained to provide non-evaluative feedback on all aspects of teaching (e.g. planning, creating community in the classroom, developing authentic assessments). We use the word consultation because it allows for flexibility based on faculty's needs - we do not assume that our consultants are the experts, though they all have teaching expertise. The purpose of our consultations is to ask what requesting faculty are looking to improve and provide relevant and actionable feedback towards a stated goal. 

All consultations are:

  • Voluntary and confidential
  • About teaching
  • Available to faculty and professional staff who teach

Your consultation will begin with a meeting to discuss your needs and goals, and then we will work together to formulate a plan which could look like:

  • support in designing a course or planning a lesson
  • feedback on developing an assessment
  • non-evaluative classroom observation
  • videotape analysis

We can work with individuals on long-term course plans and on discreet challenges in class.

Want to get feedback from your students?

End of semester evaluations can provide important feedback, but we never get to change our practice for the students who gave the feedback. Small Group Instructional Feedback provides a mechanism for you to receive feedback from your students while they are still taking your class.

Between weeks 5-9 of each semester, our trained consultants:

  • Meet with you to learn what you’d like to know from your students
  • Observe a class
  • Survey the students while you are out of the room
  • Synthesize the student feedback and discuss it with you

What happens while you are out of the room?

  • Students reflect what is helping their learning and what is not helping their learning
  • They work in small groups to come to consensus about the those questions

Why should faculty do it?

  • This process demonstrates to students that you care deeply about their learning
  • It gives you a chance to hear what is really impacting students, and what is not.

To sign up for a consultation please contact Gena Merliss ( emerliss@monroecc.edu). Please include a sentence or two about what you are looking for from a consultation. Also include your availability so you can be matched up with someone from our team.

Eugenia Merliss
Teaching & Creativity Center
08/26/2021