Confidential Consultations & Observations

A consult is just a meeting with a staff member from the CTL’s educational development team. We specialize in helping instructors build courses, improve their teaching, and work through any issues that come up along the way. Consultations can be in-person, over the phone, or virtual. Think of a consultation as a chance to confidentially talk through a teaching-related issue or question with a sympathetic colleague.

Consultations routinely cover topics such as:

• Troubleshooting classroom challenges
• Designing courses and course materials (e.g. syllabi, assignments, grading criteria, Canvas course pages, etc.)
• Strategies for engaging students and promoting classroom participation
• Using technology effectively in your teaching
• Developing accessible course content and materials aligned with the principles of Universal Design for Learning
• Teaching-related job market materials
• The Center for Teaching and Learning Professional Development in Teaching Program

It’s largely up to you! We’ll ask you some questions to learn about your expectations and what you hope to get out of the interaction. Then we’ll guide the process to help you achieve your goals.

A consult is a great way to get an outside perspective on a teaching-related issue. We don’t have all of the answers, but our job is to spend all of our time thinking how to make teaching and learning better, and we want to share what we’ve found with you.

You’re the expert in your course. We’re here to help you your teaching in that course however we can, even if its just need a partner to bounce some teaching ideas off of.

We treat all of our consultations and what happens inside them as strictly confidential. The only people who know you had a conversation with us are the CTL educational development staff and anyone with whom you share that information.

All of our educational development staff are members of The POD Network and abide by its Ethical Guidelines for Educational Developers which specify that our consultations with instructors remain confidential.

Generally, staff discusses the class with the instructor prior to the observation to gain understanding about how feedback might be tailored and to understand the unique challenges and opportunities related to teaching and learning in that particular instance. Frequent areas of focus for observations include but are not limited to: Classroom Management, Clarity and Organization of Content, Presentation Skills, Use of Technology, Teaching Methods, and Inclusive Teaching.

Following the observation, the instructor meets again with our staff to follow up and consider strengths and areas for growth visible during the session. A confidential observation document is written up after these meetings and shared directly with the instructor. If the CTL has recorded the session for the instructor, an MP4 recording of the class session will be made available to the instructor via WUSTLBox after the observation is completed.

Instructors request teaching observations for lots of reasons. Sometimes instructors have specific issues that they’re trying to solve in their class (e.g. increasing participation). Other times they just want an outside perspective to get fresh ideas new things to try out in their class.