Week 3: The Teaching Portfolio
With last week’s discussion of ethics and
professionalism in teaching, this week we discussed the set of resources known
as the teaching portfolio. We spoke
about everything from what a teaching portfolio is, to why it’s important,
what it contains, and how it can and
should be tailored to suit the needs
of specific institutions.
So: What is a teaching portfolio?
A teaching portfolio is a collection of
documents related to your teaching, culled from a variety of sources (not just
student ratings!). This collection, focusing on a diverse range of teaching
materials, includes both the documents themselves as well as brief descriptions
of the documents in order to provide broader context to what’s included.
Why is a teaching portfolio important?
There are lots of reasons! Some of the ones we
discussed included:
·
Portfolios provide
documented evidence of teaching that help provide job application readers with
a better sense of your skills and accomplishments as a teacher – in short, they
help to humanize you within the confines of a process (the job search) that
often seems to do the opposite.
·
The process of selecting
and organizing material for a portfolio can help one reflect on and improve
one’s teaching.
·
Portfolios are a step
toward a more public, professional view of teaching as a scholarly activity.
·
Portfolios can offer a
look at development over time, helping one see teaching as on ongoing process
of inquiry, experimentation, and reflection.
·
Teaching portfolios
capture evidence of one’s entire teaching career, in contrast to what are
called course portfolios that capture evidence related to a single course.
Also key to note in
these processes is that teaching portfolios can serve many purposes:
·
Job applicants for
faculty positions can use teaching portfolios to document their teaching
effectiveness.
·
Faculty members up for
promotion or tenure can also use teaching portfolios to document their teaching
effectiveness.
·
Faculty members and
teaching assistants can use teaching portfolios to reflect on and refine their
teaching skills and philosophies.
·
Faculty members and
teaching assistants can use teaching portfolios, particularly ones shared
online, to “go public” with their teaching to invite comments from their peers
and to share teaching successes so that their peers can build on them.
What goes into a teaching portfolio?
The specifics can vary, but generally speaking,
a portfolio includes the following basic components:
·
Title page
·
Table of contents (or
menu if your portfolio is electronic)
·
Introduction or summary
of portfolio contents
·
Sections, with brief
summaries of content for each section
·
Most important: a
summary that reflects on evaluations and how you have used them to improve your
teaching effectiveness
In terms of what material is included in your
main sections, the possibilities are nearly endless! We reviewed the following
list, taken from Vanderbilt’s teaching resources center (link to page provided
below):
1. Your Thoughts About Teaching
·
A reflective “teaching
statement” describing your personal teaching philosophy, strategies, and
objectives.
·
A personal statement
describing your teaching goals for the next few years
2. Documentation of Your Teaching
·
A list of courses taught
and/or TAed, with enrollments and a description of your responsibilities
·
Number of advisees,
graduate and undergraduate
·
Syllabi
·
Course descriptions with
details of content, objectives, methods, and procedures for evaluating student
learning
·
Reading lists
·
Assignments
·
Exams and quizzes,
graded and ungraded
·
Handouts, problem sets,
lecture outlines
·
Descriptions and
examples of visual materials used
·
Descriptions of uses of
computers and other technology in teaching
·
Videotapes of your
teaching
3. Teaching Effectiveness
·
Summarized student evaluations
of teaching, including response rate and relationship to departmental average
·
Written comments from
students on class evaluations
·
Comments from a peer
observer or a colleague teaching the same course
·
Statements from
colleagues in the department or elsewhere, regarding the preparation of
students for advanced work
·
Letters from students,
preferably unsolicited
·
Letters from course
head, division head or chairperson
·
Statements from alumni
4. Materials Demonstrating Student Learning
·
Scores on standardized
or other tests, before and after instruction
·
Students’ lab books or
other workbooks
·
Students’ papers,
essays, or creative works
·
Graded work from the
best and poorest students, with teacher’s feedback to students
·
Instructor’s written
feedback on student work
5. Activities to Improve Instruction
·
Participation in
seminars or professional meetings on teaching
·
Design of new courses
·
Design of
interdisciplinary or collaborative courses or teaching projects
·
Use of new methods of
teaching, assessing learning, grading
·
Preparation of a
textbook, lab manual, courseware, etc.
·
Description of
instructional improvement projects developed or carried out
6. Contributions to the Teaching Profession and/or
Your Institution
·
Publications in teaching
journals
·
Papers delivered on
teaching
·
Reviews of forthcoming
textbooks
·
Service on teaching
committees
·
Assistance to colleagues
on teaching matters
·
Work on curriculum
revision or development
7. Honors, Awards, or Recognitions
·
Teaching awards from
department, college, or university
·
Teaching awards from
profession
·
Invitations based on
teaching reputation to consult, give workshops, write articles, etc.
·
Requests for advice on
teaching by committees or other organized groups
Regardless of where you are in the graduate
school process, we all agreed that it’s never to early to start compiling your
portfolio! This makes it much easier to tailor your portfolio to specific
institutions when the time comes. To that end, consider compiling a
“master portfolio” in a three-ring binder, file-folder system, or online, then
culling materials from the “master portfolio” to create a portfolio that is
tailored for a specific position to which you are applying. Keep in mind the
type of position (e.g., teaching “load,” tenure expectations) and the specific
teaching responsibilities that you would expect to fulfill in that position.
Rather than including a random selection of syllabi for courses you are
prepared to teach, for example, if you are applying for a position at a large
university, you might include three syllabi: one for an introductory
undergraduate course, one for an advanced undergraduate course, and one for a
graduate-level course. If you are applying for a position at a small,
liberal-arts college, you might include syllabi for a required, introductory
lecture course or laboratory, a course for “non-majors,” and a more advanced
seminar.
Thankfully,
there are many, many resources designed to help people put together a
compelling and effective teaching portfolio. Some of the best are included
below – please consult them for more information, or contact the CEE for a free
consultation!
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