A POD Connects group is a small group of trusted colleagues who commit to meeting at regular intervals to provide each other with peer mentorship and accountability to support their professional development and growth as educational developers.

Connection groups provide a space to share ideas and resources, provide emotional support, and create a sense of community.

We envision that participants in the topic based POD Connects groups would work towards growing in these areas generally, and this could potentially feed into interaction with/participation in related POD committees. We are particularly interested in bringing together diverse groups of people, because we know how important it is to unearth our assumptions about our practice and examine alternative perspectives, which are often facilitated through diverse collaborative teams. To that end, we invite members who hold different identities such as those based on ability, race, gender, gender and sexual identity.

We recommend setting a 6–12 month goal for the group and revisiting if members would like to continue beyond that timeline.

The Professional Development Committee (PDC) created a process to help place POD Network members into connection groups. The goal is to help POD Network members broaden their networks beyond their institutions and support each other in our work as educational developers. We form groups a few times a year.

Join a connection group

PDC has also created resources to help connection groups establish expectations for the group as well as tips on how to sustain a group over time.

If you’ve created a POD Connects group of your own, please let us know! This allows us to maintain the website and act as a resource for your group.

  Mastermind Groups transitioned into POD Connects in fall 2020.