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#1 - The Quest: Planning is Key. Find the right people to start-up and support the teaching square at your local institution. Think about your goal. Are you primarily using this to teach people how to teach in a specific course modality? Are you interested in focusing on pedagogy and how that is explored in different course modalities—blended, fully online, synchronous video, face-to-face?If you are focusing on 4 faculty members consider having an instructional designer or someone from the faculty center to serve as a member or as a facilitator. Set the ground rules and expectations as well as some common setup and protocols for your Square. >> George Mason University (GMU's) Teaching Square's page and Stone Hills College's Start-up Guide provide planning ideas. #2 - Assembling the Teaching Square. Assembling the group involves promoting or recruiting faculty collaboration across the disciplines. Here at UCF, we have now utilized teaching squares in interdisciplinary, varied teaching levels and potentially different modalities. Collaboration across campus is key! Mix individuals by discipline and teaching and/or experience? Consider how long faculty have taught online. >> This Faculty Focus article discusses the benefits of cross-disciplinary perspectives. #3 - Share. Help faculty understand their role in sharing their courses and receiving feedback from colleagues. Create tools that point them toward their role as collaborators of building effective courses and not that of criticizing the work of their colleagues. Teaching Squares should also schedule a time to observe each group member’s teaching, allowing for the sharing of different techniques based on class size and modality. >> GMU’s What does a Teaching Square Share? section provides a substantial exchange of information that occurs. The Teaching Effectiveness Self and Peer Review form provides a guide for outcomes and reflections. #4 - Reflection. Key component to the success of the Teaching Square is reflection on pedagogy and teaching practices and how to incorporate best practices carried out by their colleagues. This also allows faculty and instructional designers to build for the experience. >> The Appalachian State University Teaching Squares Program shares examples of Observation Rounds and Observational Forms. #5 - Expand the Impact. Help faculty think of teaching and learning projects that maximize the impact of the square (i.e., research publications and blogs). Indeed, encourage them to use their work in teaching squares to write publish in teaching journals. Or work with their instructional designer to present their work at conferences. Like Squares, teaching is best when shared with the community. >> The UC Santa Cruz's Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning provides guides to show the impact of your Teaching Squares efforts.
*Please note that like in Travis Thurston's Resilient Pedagogy: Practical Teaching Strategies to Overcome Distance, Disruption, and Distraction, we define faculty broadly “as anyone who is committed to improving teaching and learning” (Thurston, Lundstrum, and Gonzalez, 2021).
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