Professional services

At The Discussion Project, our team knows that improving instruction requires risk-taking, practice, and feedback. We provide customized and supportive instructional consultation and coaching to help you improve your instruction and your students’ learning.

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Improve teaching and learning through coaching and feedback.

The Discussion Project’s flexible model delivers personalized coaching services at the individual, team, department, and institutional level to support professional learning. Our team focuses on helping you achieve your goals in your chosen time frame.
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Instructional    coaching

One-on-one coaching for designing discussion plans and implementing them successfully.

Improvement in any skill comes with practice and feedback. Every top-flight athlete has a coach. Trying out new discussion pedagogy techniques can be challenging. That is why The Discussion Project offers support through instructional coaching. A typical coaching cycle with a professional instructional coach includes co-planning a discussion, a classroom observation, and a feedback session. We help you design and implement discussion, and then reflect to improve over time.

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Team consultation & coaching

Embedded professional development, and customized learning for teams and departments.

Often instructional teams or entire departments choose to work on pedagogy together and need expertise, support, consultation, and facilitation. The Discussion Project’s curriculum and instruction experts can work with your group to customize professional learning opportunities and facilitate collaborative sessions. This offers personalized support directly aligned with your team and departmental needs, but can also grow  and evolve as the team’s needs change over time.

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Collaborative classroom visits

A supportive system for improving discussion in your institution’s classrooms.

The Discussion Project team, through a non-evaluative system of classroom observation and feedback sessions, can provide your instructors and leaders with expert guidance on how to improve discussions. Collaborative Classroom Visits (CCV) also create a culture of open practice and collegiality around teaching and learning. The process involves training on how to provide non-evaluative feedback and is responsive to the requests of the colleague being observed.

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    TESTIMONIALS

    What our professional learners say

    Carey McAndrews

    Professor, Urban Planning, UW-Madison

    “Unlike other forms of professional learning, the Collaborative Classroom Visit was an immersion, a 360. First, we prepared to observe a classroom, learning about how to observe and collect evidence and hearing about the lesson. Next, we attended the class and paid close attention to what students were doing. Along the way, we couldn’t help but pick up some of the class content, which was intellectually exciting. Finally, we had the opportunity to debrief what we learned using a method of communicative feedback that has helped me feel more confident communicating in a host of other situations. The entire experience has helped me think about what I might be able to accomplish in my classroom with a little attention from helpful colleagues and a fantastic method.”

    Rhonda Reinholtz

    Psychology, UW-Madison

    “I would recommend the CCV to anyone interested in improving their teaching! For me it had two primary strengths: For one thing, just knowing that observers would be in my classroom and then going through the experience led me to new insights about my teaching — it was a sort of catalyst that caused me to think about my class not only through my own eyes, but also through the perspective of someone in the class. I also realized more clearly what my own goals were and the ways in which I was and wasn’t meeting them. In addition to gaining a sharpened perspective on my own teaching, I gained the observers’ perspectives on the class — they were able to notice and document aspects of the students’ engagement and experience that I would not have seen without their feedback and they provided me with their own reactions which also enriched what I learned from the process. I would honestly characterize the CCV as an enlightening experience of my teaching and I can’t imagine anyone not benefiting significantly from going through it. “

    Ready to have a discussion?

    Submit your information for a personalized course walk-through with The Discussion Project team to better understand how it can support the growth of your instructors, departments, and institution.

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