Effective Teaching Practices | Program Design 2023-24
The ETP program is a set of professional development experiences providing a deep dive into effective teaching principles and practices. It utilizes the curriculum of the Association of Colleges and University Educators (ACUE) accompanied by support of Cal Poly peer mentors. In this program, faculty can either complete 25 modules to earn the ACUE's Certificate in Effective College Teaching or complete six modules earn an ACUE microcredential on a particular theme. This is the fourth year that the CTLT has offered the ACUE-grounded program at Cal Poly. This program is a component of Cal Poly's Graduation Initiative Equity Priority 5 Project.
Program Design
The program design follows the successful design of the ETP Program that ran in AY 2020-2, AY 2021-22 and AY 2022-23. The design includes elements 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.
This year's cohort of early career faculty aligns with the campus strategic priority to enhance student success through eliminating equity gaps. This means that participating faculty's accomplishments will contribute to that priorities through strengthening their teaching effectiveness. The cohort has faculty peer facilitators who will provide guidance encouragement and opportunities to connect with cohort peers. Participants will focus on a specific course for the program, with full expectations that insights and methods gained can be implemented eventually in all the courses that they teach.
Focus Courses
Applicants will be asked to identify a focus course that they teach regularly and that they see has high potential for improvements in design and teaching methods to enhance student success.
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 diverse 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 that will be advocated in the CTLT's advanced workshops on equitable and inclusive instruction (i.e., the "Building Toward Equity" workshop series).
- 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.
- Improving graduation rates by reducing both course retakes and equity gaps
In addition to the array of resources and strategies that Cal Poly has employed to improve graduation rates and to reduce equity gaps, faculty can contribute to student success through ever more effective instructional practices. The vast majority of teaching methods recommended to better support students who are of underrepresented minority groups or first generation or low income families align extremely closely with methods included in this program.
- Supporting new faculty to learn and apply current, effective teaching methods
This year's cohort is designated for new hires, with an emphasis on assistant professors fresh from their doctoral programs. Each identified a focus course that they expect to teach regularly, where they can implement ideas and explore approaches inspired during the experience and, over time, propagate those methods to all of their courses as their career unfolds.
- Supporting lecturers with opportunities to strengthen their teaching
Both cohorts are excellent fits 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 each cohort's 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 pledged to actively share what they learn in this program with their peers, which will expand the benefits of this program across the campus beyond the 100 faculty involved this year. This will contribute to multiplying the value of these participants' investment in their professional development over time.
Student Impact
In this year's program, up to 30 courses are expected to be targeted for revisions incorporating ideas and insights from the program experiences. Applicants will be 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 implement from their program experiences will be visible.
