Peer-to-Peer Professional Development in Building a Culture of Collegiality in Corequisite Education

Like many of its contemporaries across the state, North Central Texas College's (NCTC) English and math faculty were committed to the promise of corequisite education and its students' success as outlined by the Dana Center, but they also understood the obstacles to implementing, assessing, and scaling its corequisite courses. NCTC's English and math faculty sought opportunities and resources to come together and collaborate to meet its students' needs and embraced professional development opportunities that promised specific, meaningful, and pedagogically sound deliverables. What they needed were more opportunities for peer-to-peer collaboration where they could engage with each other and create curriculum and instructor resources without distraction. To achieve these goals, in the fall of 2021, NCTC applied for and received the College Readiness and Completion Model (CRCM) grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. As part of this grant, the English and math faculty participated in a series of evening workshops where they would collaborate and develop course-specific resources for students enrolled in corequisite first-semester Freshman Composition (ENGL 1301) and Contemporary Mathematics (MATH 1332) courses. The results showed that participating in the peer-to-peer professional development workshops was an overwhelmingly positive experience for English and math faculty.