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DOCUMENTING TEACHING
For educators at any stage in their career, reflecting on one’s teaching practices—through peer observation or curating a teaching portfolio—provides an opportunity to better understand the impact of one’s instructional methods on student learning.
Documenting Teaching
These resources support instructors in documenting their teaching, reflecting on their practice, and utilizing Student Experience of Teaching (SET) and mid-term survey data as formative feedback.
Produced in collaboration with the Academic Senate Committee on Teaching, this white paper guides instructors in developing evidence of their teaching effectiveness, in order to provide a holistic and representative picture of the individual as a teacher, both for the personnel review process and for formative self-reflection.
Produced in collaboration with the Academic Senate Committee on Teaching, this document provides instructors with guidance on how to use quantitative and qualitative Student Experience of Teaching (SET) data, which may be employed as evidence of teaching effectiveness (and growth as a teacher) during the personnel review process.
Produced in collaboration with the Academic Senate Committee on Teaching, this white paper guides instructors in reading and utilizing Student Experience of Teaching (SET) surveys.
In this brief essay, an educator at Harvard provides instructors with strategies for getting meaningful feedback from students on the the Student Experience of Teaching (SET) surveys.
This document provides students with guidance on how to utilize SETs and other feedback mechanisms as resources for reflecting on their own learning and for providing feedback that can be effectively used by instructors to improve student learning.
This webpage at the University of Texas at Austin Faculty Innovation Center provides helpful guidance and hands-on strategies for preparing, administering, and evaluating data from mid-term feedback surveys in order to improve teaching and support student learning.
Peer Observation of Teaching
Peer observation provides both observers and observed instructors with the opportunity to reflect on teaching and to consider the impact of specific instructional choices on student learning. These resources provide tools and templates for a variety of approaches to peer observation that can generate productive conversations between colleagues.
CITL’s guide to doing peer observations of teaching includes a pre-observation questionnaire for discussion between observer and instructor; a protocol for observing a class; and a post-observation questionnaire for discussion between observer and instructor. These recommended tools invite a non-evaluative discussion of teaching that is instructor-focused and allows for observers to share information about what they notice in the clasroom relative to instructor goals and student learning.
This more comprehensive, research-based guide to peer observation of teaching introduces different models for peer observation; provides suggestions for learning-focused feedback; offers reflection questions to consider before, during, and after an observation; and includes sample tools to guide the observation process.
In this model for peer observation of teaching, participants reflect on what can be learned about their own teaching by observing their colleagues, instead of providing evaluative feedback. The guide supports participants to establish goals before the observation, provides a template for observation, and promotes the observer’s development of a plan to try out new teaching approaches based on the observation.
Drawing from research in K-12 education, this article outlines a model for instructor-centered observation. In this approach, an instructor defines a focus question, an observer supports the instructor by observing and then describing instructor-student interactions, and the instructor reflects on how the data collected by the observer can inform their practice.
Teaching Portfolios
A representative collection of materials that document one’s teaching effectiveness, a teaching portfolio captures one’s approaches to and reflections on their teaching in relation to student learning, with the goal of communicating one’s identity as an educator.
An overview of the general purpose and common contents of a teaching portfolio, with reflection exercises that support instructors during the portfolio development process.
In addition to providing a list of resources on teaching portfolios, this site offers a comprehensive checklist for common components of a teaching portfolio.
Directed at advanced graduate students, this article reviews a survey of search committee chairs in order to categorize key components of an effective teaching statement, and provides a rubric for composing and self-evaluating a teaching statement.
James M. Lang’s article addresses a common challenge for educators: “How do you write a statement of teaching philosophy that doesn’t sound exactly like everybody else’s?”
CITL provides a list of tips for developing a teaching statement, especially intended for early-career educators, with a focus on highlighting concrete evidence of student learning.