Community of Practice - CATS

The College Course Advancement Team (CATs) was started in the summer 2020 as a “scale up” from the Faculty Leader in Online Learning position that has been in College of Science since 2018. Both facets are focused on the use of online technologies / classroom strategies in discipline specific applications. The CATs are found in every College at RIT (except GIS) and are faculty from within their assigned College. These are faculty who have a record of teaching excellence, a focus on student success, and a desire to help their colleagues advance their own classrooms. Through office hours, consultations, and sometimes just a friendly chat – the CATs are available to help their colleagues through course design / redesign, assignment modifications, and tech strategies as they apply to this new world of higher education. While the Innovative Learning Institute (ILI) staff are available for workshops and consultations about pedagogical approaches and applications of technology, the CATs are able to help their colleagues see the application of those tools directly to their discipline. While we all know that the tools exist, and that ILI is there for us, sometimes we just do not know how it will apply to our classroom / discipline / specific problem. The CATs are available for just that purpose!