AY 375 Fall 2014: Sixteenth Day Plan

The final class of Ay375 a discussion of the Teaching Portfolio, where to go from here, and Aaron getting some feedback on his revamped Ay10 course.

1. Keep a teaching portfolio. They are becoming increasingly important for faculty applications, and they serve as a good repository of your best teaching practices.
2. Always keep thinking about teaching, despite what the research mongrels at places like UC Berkeley might tell you. Teaching can have a positive impact on your research, because teaching requires you to consider new material from alternative points of view, which in turn leads to new insights. And it's fun!

As a class discussion:

• What about your philosophy has changed over the semester?
• What sort of themes pervade your teaching now?

More and more colleges and universities are reexamining their commitment to teaching and exploring ways to improve and reward it. Faculty are being held accountable to provide clear and concise evidence of the quality of their classroom teaching.

What is a teaching portfolio? It is a factual description of your teaching strengths and accomplishments. It includes documents and materials which collectively suggest the scope and quality of a professor's teaching performance. It is to teaching what lists of publications, grants, and honors are to research and scholarship.

The portfolio is not an exhaustive compilation of all the documents and materials that bear on teaching performance. Instead, it presents selected information on teaching activities and solid evidence of their effectiveness.

No teaching portfolio is the same, but there are some common elements:

Material on yourself:

• Statement of teaching philosophy
• List of teaching responsibilities, including course titles, numbers, enrollments, and, if applicable brief statement about how the course plays a role in the major.
• Representative course syllabi detailing course content and objectives, teaching methods, readings, and homework assignments.
• Participation in programs on sharpening instructional skills.
• Description of curricular revisions, instructional innovations.
• Description of steps taken to evaluate and improve one's teaching, including changes resulting from self-evaluation and time spent reading journals on teaching.

Material from others:

• Statements from colleagues who have observed you in the classroom.
• Student course evaluations (all of them, not hand-picked ones).
• Honors or recognitions from colleagues, such as teaching awards.
• Statements from students/alumni on the quality of instruction.

Products of Teacher/Student Learning:

• Scores on pre/post test exams.
• Examples of graded essays along with the your comments on why it was graded the way it was graded.
• Successive drafts of student papers along with your comments on how each draft could be improved.

Other items that might appear:

• A videotape of a section or lecture.
• Self-evaluation of your teaching.
• Performance reviews from faculty advisers.
• Select outreach that emphasize teaching.

• GSI Resource Center Workshops on Teaching. Some of these are required for the Certificate in Teaching.
• Keep your teaching logs, evaluations, and materials. Look at them when you teach again.
• Books and papers in the supplemental reading section.
• Certificate Program offered through the GSI Resource Center. Taking this class is a necessary step, one that you have already completed!

1. None! We're done!