Instructional Partnerships: A TaLT Learning Community

An Instructional Partner (IP) is a person who has taken the course you are teaching and successfully completed it in the recent past. They attend the course as you are teaching and work with you in partnership to make improvements, add new ideas, and also help support the students enrolled in the course. When you invite previous students to be your “pedagogical consultants” and partners in teaching, the result is like “looking in a mirror, only better” (Cook-Sather, 2008, p. 473). When students engage in these partnerships, they develop an appreciation of pedagogy, and they may explore career opportunities that they had not previously considered (Hoepner et al., 2015). As they learn about teaching, they also learn about learning. Faculty working with instructional partners have the opportunity to expand their perspectives, understanding the student experience, and benefiting from in the moment changes. While EMU’s Supplemental Instruction students (from the Holman Learning Center) are there to primarily support students in the class, your IP is there primarily to support you.

This one semester learning community will include pairs of faculty and their student partners who will serve as their IP for a class of their choosing. The faculty and student partners will implement the instructional partnership model during the Fall 2025 semester while in the learning community. Faculty may invite any student who has successfully completed the course in the last few semesters. Ideally, the invited student is an individual who will be open to working collaboratively with the faculty member. We welcome applications from all educators, including faculty and full-time lecturers from all programs.

The Instructional Partnership learning community is funded by the Faculty Development Center. This learning community also supports the Teaching and Learning Together (TaLT) initiative that began at the Bruce K. Nelson Faculty Development Center during the 2022-2023 academic year. TaLT aims to increase collaborations in teaching and learning between faculty and students across our campus. We are working towards increasing the connections and community, which have historically been a strength of EMU.

Applications are due by Friday, May 30 @ 8 PM.

About the Facilitators

Dr. Sarah M. Ginsberg

I am the Faculty Associate Director for the Faculty Development Center and I have also  been on the faculty at Eastern Michigan University for over 20 years. My scholarship of teaching and learning research has focused on issues within my field of communication sciences and disorders and across higher education. I have been working with the Teaching and Learning Together (TaLT) program since its inception and enjoy working with faculty and students from all of the programs at EMU to improve the collaborative nature of the teaching and learning experience. I think we all find renewed joy in our shared work when we come together to improve higher education.

Bre Cosman

I received my BA in Communication Sciences & Disorders from Wayne State University in 2023 and am currently in EMU’s Communication Sciences & Disorders MA program. I am presently Dr. Ginsberg’s Instructional Partner and am excited to facilitate this learning community with her! I am looking forward to seeing how students and teachers collaborate to enhance both the learner and teacher experiences.