Consultations | Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Morgan Center staff and Instructional Designers in the Academic Technology Center consult with individuals (including faculty, staff educators, TAs and PLAs), with small groups of educators, and with whole departments about all sorts of teaching-related questions and ideas. All services are confidential and focus on development and growth in a supportive environment. We do not have any evaluative roles. Consultations can take on many forms to meet your needs, including the following:

Are you looking for a sounding board for your ideas, or resources to assist in the planning stage? Maybe you’re creating or revising a particular assignment or project and feeling a bit stuck? Looking for feedback on a revised syllabus? Maybe you’re interested in starting to “flip” a course to make more time for student engagement in class? These are things we can help with.

Not sure whether or how to respond to mid-term feedback from students? We can serve as a sounding board. We can also visit one or more class sessions or watch class recordings and provide feedback on areas of interest to you, or meet with a focus group of students to get more insight.

We regularly meet with instructors as they reflect on a recently completed course to decide what’s working well, what’s not, and a small number of changes to make in the next iteration. We also help instructors analyze data from Student Course Reports and make sense of student comments.

While the vast majority of student comments on end-of-term Student Course Reports are constructive, some faculty occasionally receive unconstructive, hurtful, sexist, or racist comments, particularly early in their career. Reading these comments can be discouraging or traumatic. For that reason, we offer to preview the student comments, remove any that are unconstructive or obviously biased, and send a “clean” report for your review. This service is advertised to first year faculty at the end of each term and may be continued in subsequent years as needed.

We can be a respondent as you reflect on your teaching, and we can brainstorm with you about forms of evidence and artifacts for your portfolio that will present a holistic view of your teaching and impact on students.

Our Research & Evaluation Associate, Kimberly LeChasseur, consults with faculty to facilitate scholarly writing and publishing on teaching and learning, co-design and draft evaluation and assessment plans, inform the selection or creation of assessments, and analyze data about the value and areas in need of improvement for faculty- and staff-led projects. To arrange a conversation or consultation with Kimberly, please use this form rather than the request at the bottom of this page.