Cohort Members' Roles and Responsibilities

Learning Generation seeks to generate new ways of teaching and learning. To do this we establish Innovation Cohorts who work together to examine the relationship between the practice of teaching and the use of technology. Each cohort consists of School of Education faculty, School of Education students, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty, practicing teachers and K-12 students. Each Innovation Cohort identifies areas and strategies for infusing technology into teacher preparation programs and works to operationalize their strategies.

Each member of a cohort has an important role to play and each has areas of responsibility and action to attend to. It should be noted that as a cohort forms, these roles and responsibilities are negotiated and refined to meet the needs of the cohort. Additionally, actual membership of the cohort can be adjusted to best meet the needs of the cohort.

While a cohort is a collaborative undertaking, with a shared mission, and shared responsibility, the School of Education faculty member is the responsible for the initial forming of the cohort. This process often begins when the faculty member consults with our Faculty Liaison about working with a cohort. The Faculty Liaison will work with the interested faculty member to reconcile the faculty member's interests with the cohort model. During this time, a cohort plan is developed according to a simple set of specifications. This plan lays out the basic structure and areas of interest for the cohort. The School of Education faculty member is also responsible for selecting additional members of the cohort, organizing meetings, ensuring that timelines are met and for making sure that cohort deliverables are made available to the Learning Generation community via the LearnGen web site. These are the resources for school of education faculty involved with cohorts and the cohort planning model.

Students are an essential and especially important part of a Learning Generation cohort. In addition to acting in a variety of capacities as a member of a cohort, the student(s) in a cohort are the contact between the cohort and the Technology Infusion Group (TIG). Students involved with Learning Generation cohorts are required to attend a weekly meeting with TIG, participate in gatherings, projects and other events in collaboration with TIG. Following are resources for School of Education students involved with cohorts.

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty participate in the cohort process in several ways including as a subject matter expert, consultant, and research partner. In addition, the CLAS faculty member helps LearnGen recruit technology proficient students to the teaching profession. We believe that the partnerships that are formed between the School of Education and CLAS make it more likely that students will have more opportunities to come into contact with people from the School of Education early in their coursework, and thus may be more likely to consider teaching as a career. Here are resources for College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty involved with cohorts.

Practicing teachers, sometimes called Field-Based teachers play an important part in Learning Generation cohorts. Cohorts call upon the practical application experience that practicing teachers possess. Additionally practicing teachers are research partners and subject matter experts for many cohorts. Another responsibility of the practicing teacher member of a cohort is to select and provide guidance to a K-12 student member of the cohort. Resources for practicing teachers involved with cohorts.

A cooperating teacher generally recruits K-12 students to work with a cohort. The K-12 student provides an end-user view of the work of the cohort and in many cases posses excellent technology skills that the cohort relies upon in the pursuit of its goals. In some cases the K-12 student serves as a beta-tester for resources created by a cohort.