Timely Teaching

Timely Teaching is a collaborative, grassroots way to help you gather early, informal student feedback in your classes. There is substantial evidence that you can improve your courses when you incorporate this practice into your teaching regularly. Or to put it another way: using Timely Teaching can help make you a better teacher with happier students!

Timely Teaching is about you and your needs as an instructor–in any modality you’re teaching in. We assign trained faculty members–your peers–to help you gather feedback on your classes before or near the mid-semester. These faculty, the Timely Teaching Facilitators, volunteer to help through teaching observations and midterm visits. These activities are not connected to the formal evaluation of teaching in any way

Midterm visits

You can schedule an SGID, or a small group instructional diagnosis, is a simple way to gather feedback about a course during the semester. A Timely Teaching facilitator will conduct a confidential in-class discussion with students to learn about how the course is going. The facilitator will then compile the information into an aggregate report to ensure student confidentiality, share it with you, and then help you with next steps.

The Teaching Observation Process

A teaching observation is a great way for you to get a new perspective on your teaching! Once you’ve requested a teaching observation, your colleague facilitator will reach out to you to schedule the classroom visit, as well as an initial meeting to discuss your goals for the observation. After the observation, you will meet together to discuss.

For more details about how SGIDs and observations are conducted, please consult the document What is Timely Teaching?

Once you decide that you’re ready to take part in the initiative, you can sign up through the CTLE website consultation page.