Effective Teaching Practices | Program Design 2025-26
The ETP program offers professional development experiences that provide a deep dive into effective teaching principles and practices. It utilizes the curriculum of the Association of Colleges and Universities (ACUE) accompanied by support of Cal Poly faculty peer mentors. In the certificate program, faculty complete modules to earn the ACUE's Certificate in Effective College Teaching. We also on occasion have offered opportunities to earn an ACUE microcredential on a particular theme by completing a six-module workshop. And we have offered opportunities to continue progress using the ACUE curriculum in the ACUE: Year Two program.
Program Design
The program design follows the successful design of the ETP Program that has been offered at Cal Poly since AY 2020-21. The design includes elements are intended to:
- Foster connections among participating faculty
- Provide a supportive learning environment
- Facilitate successful progress through the curriculum
- Promote thoughtful and effective implementation of new knowledge and methods that benefit student success.
Each year's cohort aligns with the campus strategic priority to enhance student success through eliminating equity gaps. This means that participating faculty's accomplishments will contribute to those priorities through strengthening their teaching effectiveness.
Focus Courses
Applicants are asked to identify a focus course that they teach regularly and that has high potential for improvements in design and teaching methods to enhance student success. The expectation is that the insights and methods gained can be implemented eventually in all the courses that they teach.
Cohort Facilitators
Participants' experience with the ACUE's multimedia online modules are complemented with Cal Poly faculty peer facilitator support. These are individuals who facilitated or completed the same curriculum in a prior year and so are knowledgeable about the experience. Their purpose is to help cohort members complete the program to earn the certificate while gaining solid working knowledge of core principles and practices of effective instruction. Their responsibilities include:
- Encouraging and motivating course-takers
- Leading and contributing to discussions
- Sharing pedagogical insights
- Helping course-takers with reflection assignments
- Monitoring cohort and course-taker progress
Program Contributions to Campus Goals
This program incorporates design elements to maximize its contributions to several high-priority goals regarding evolving and strengthening the curriculum:
- Fostering a more inclusive and equitable campus.
Most of the ACUE modules infuse equity and inclusion into their support materials, models and recommended methods. In addition, gaining a solid foundation in effective instruction will enable participants to be better prepared to take on the challenging practices advocated in the CTLT's workshops on equitable and inclusive instruction.
- Strengthening General Education instruction and impact.
Participating faculty include those who regularly teach Gen Ed courses. When applying, some faculty members identify a specific Gen Ed course and provided a rationale for why it is a good candidate for a focus of this workshop experience. Outcomes can include improved student success in their Gen Ed courses that can provide momentum and confidence in their major courses.
- Improving graduation rates by reducing both course retakes and equity gaps.
Faculty can contribute to improving graduation rates and reducing achievement gaps by fostering student success through more effective instructional practices. The teaching methods included in this program are based on evidence that they benefit all students, especially those who are of underrepresented minority groups or are first generation or from lower income families.
- Supporting faculty at all career stages to learn and apply current, effective teaching methods.
Each participant identifies a focus course that they expect to teach regularly, where they can implement ideas and explore approaches inspired during the experience. Over time, they can propagate those methods to all of their courses.
- Supporting lecturers with opportunities to strengthen their teaching.
The program is an excellent fit for lecturers, particularly the long-term, high teaching load lecturers that contribute substantially to the success of significant numbers of students.
- Enhance the campus's community of educators.
On-campus facilitators will create regular opportunities for cohort faculty to connect with each other throughout the program. With parallel course projects, they will be able to exchange insights, ask questions, offer suggestions and motivate each other as they build relationships across disciplines and colleges.
- Promote long-term diffusion of the knowledge and insights over time to campus educators.
In their applications, each participant pledge to actively share what they learn in this program with their peers, which will expand the benefits of this program across the campus. This will contribute to multiplying the value of these participants' investment in their professional development over time.
Student Impact
Each year's cohort of participants selects a focus course for the workshop. The result is that as many courses and participants are the focus of revisions incorporating ideas and insights from the program experiences.
Applicants are asked to indicate how many students they typically taught personally in their focus course each year. When all participants are selected and the number of students each year in focus courses are totaled, the scale of impact from the improvements that faculty will implement from their program experiences is visible and impressive.
