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All faculty members at Kalamazoo College share an interest in teaching and learning. We work hard at our craft and we are interested in learning more. But we often work in isolation. Some of us would like to reach out to build relationships and learn from each other, to create a community of teachers and learners. But we hesitate because we do not know, and perhaps trust, each other enough.

The Course Visit Cohort is a program of class visits and follow-ups. This Community of Practice emphasizes community and relationship-building and may generate learning as an incidental outcome. The Community of Practice consist of a group of faculty members who share a concern and passion for teaching and learning, and who believe that by visiting each other’s classes we strengthen connections in our learning community, and thus provide an example of how to engage differences across our campus.

Peer Observation

At Kalamazoo College we are separated into clearly defined departments and within departments we are isolated into classrooms. This is a setup that favors and reinforces isolation. In our own classrooms we tend to teach in ways that we have found successful in the past, perhaps based on past experiences as students ourselves, with little feedback from others. The only tangible feedback that we receive is often numerical responses, and perhaps a few comments, from the student course evaluations. It does not have to be this way if we together decide to support each other through peer observation.

An excellent way to learn about your own teaching is to observe a colleague. This is true whether you observe someone from your own department or someone from a different department. Peer observation is valuable even if you or your colleague have no areas of concern; perhaps you simply want to learn what others are doing in their classrooms. Peer observation is an enjoyable form of professional development.

Additional Peer Observation Resources

• The Peer Observation web page and How-to Guide by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL)
• Peer Observation: Learning from One Another by Matthew O. Richardson for Thought & Action

Past Class Visit Cohort Participants