"When all the careful, difficult, intentional, and scholarly work
of planning and teaching a course is undocumented, it is lost for
further use. Not only is it unavailable for the teacher's own reflection,
but it is not there for aspiring teachers and colleagues to learn
from. It is also unavailable to those making important decisions
about hiring, promotion, and tenure, and to those mentoring colleagues
who are being considered in those processes."
Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#554 MAKING VISIBLE THE INTELLECTUAL
WORK IN TEACHING
Folks:
The posting below gives some useful insights on the construction
and use of course portfolios. It is by Dan Bernstein, director of
the Center for Teaching Excellence and Professor of Psychology at
the University of Kansas and Ellen Wert, formerly of the Pew Trusts,
and now an editor and educational consultant. Reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: The Organization of Teaching With Technology
Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning
--------------------------------- 1,542 words -----------------------------
MAKING VISIBLE THE INTELLECTUAL WORK IN TEACHING
Dan Bernstein and Ellen Wert
No scholar spends months in the library, laboratory, or field and
then discards the information, notes, data, and artifacts collected
during those visits. The materials represent the scholar's intellectual
effort during that time. They also are the basis of the books, papers,
and articles that help spread ideas and information, teach others
how to be scholars, and make up the record of the scholar's work
that is judged during hiring, promotion, and tenure.
Yet semester after semester, most college teachers discard the
evidence of the intellectual effort they put into teaching. The
idea of the course, decisions about texts, assignments, creative
solutions to problems that crop up during the course, innovative
plans for next year-the very things that make sense of the syllabus
and notes in the files and dog-eared texts on the shelf-exist only
in the busy teachers' mind. Teachers design assignments and then
review and evaluate their students' papers, tests, performances,
labs, and projects. But typically, the only trace of that enormous
effort (the teacher's as well as the students') is the students'
final grades.
When all the careful, difficult, intentional, and scholarly work
of planning and teaching a course is undocumented, it is lost for
further use. Not only is it unavailable for the teacher's own reflection,
but it is not there for aspiring teachers and colleagues to learn
from. It is also unavailable to those making important decisions
about hiring, promotion, and tenure, and to those mentoring colleagues
who are being considered in those processes.
Documentation of the intellectual work involved in teaching-and
its results-should be a critical part of each teacher's professional
record. Student course evaluations and peer observation of classes,
although part of the record, would be much more meaningful and useful
in the context of a nuanced picture of the course.
A practical way to produce this documentation is the "course
portfolio," a written record for each of the teacher's courses
that includes
* The teacher's goals for the course
* A plan for achieving the goals
* Assignments and samples of student work that show the depth and
breadth of learning
* Reflection on how effective the course has been and why
* Ideas for making the course better the next time
* Comment from peers on the design of the course and the students'
achievement
A small but increasing number of college teachers are creating
and maintaining "course portfolios." To be sure, making
a course portfolio requires some planning (asking the students'
permission to make copies of their work, saving copies of syllabi,
assignments, notes) and some diligence. But most of what goes into
a course portfolio is material produced in the process of planning
and teaching a course. These materials can be organized into six
sections: goals, design, student work, reflection, plans for improvement,
and peer comment.
Goals
A good course syllabus spells out clearly the teacher's goals for
the learners, along with a basic rationale for how the skills and
knowledge they develop will fit into their larger educational program.
The course portfolio starts with these statements. For example,
a teacher of a foundational course in visual literacy identifies
the skills and understanding that students will develop as they
analyze and create textile art, photographs, sculptures, or paintings.
A teacher of literary/critical theory states that students should
consider both the assumptions they bring to the task of analysis
and the origins of the theories they use in their analysis. A professor
of material sciences states that students should be able to use
abstract mathematical representations of systems to solve practical
problems, rather than relying on computational approaches.
Design
In the syllabus and during the course, the teacher explains the
instructional practices used in the course. The design section of
the course portfolio includes these explanations plus reflections
about the reasons for choosing them for this particular course and
why these approaches to teaching and learning are likely to produce
good outcomes for the students in the course.
Student work
Examples of student work provide evidence of the effectiveness
of the course and offer a student voice that can complement the
student perspective found in course ratings. At the start of each
course, instructors can obtain permission to retain copies of a
small sample of student work. From this, they can develop an accessible
archive that shows clearly what students understand at the beginning,
middle, and end of each course.
For example, to demonstrate the depth of student learning, the
visual literacy instructor displays digital images of student work,
commenting on the qualities of color, line, and form; the instructor
also provides the feedback she gave to her students. Similarly,
the literary/critical theory instructor offers essays that show
how students analyze literature and question their own cultural
assumptions, complete with comments and grades. The material science
professor provides pages of graded examination problems to demonstrate
the range of solutions that students use in solving problems. In
all cases, the teachers display the breadth of student learning
by reporting what percentage of learners achieves at different levels
of quality. The teacher's vision of what constitutes deep understanding
is thus available for discussion.
Reflection
Even the reflection section of the portfolio is not completely
new work. Teachers talk frequently with colleagues about the progress
of their courses and consider various reasons for their students'
successes and failures. And most teachers privately ponder their
own work before, during, and after the course. Taking a moment to
make some notes about these conversations and thoughts is a small
investment, especially in comparison with the many hours already
invested in the course.
Plans for improvement
Again, during and after the course, the teacher thinks about ways
to strengthen the course in the future. Committing those thoughts
to writing not only helps make those plans reality, but also makes
the ideas part of the record of the course.
Comments from expert peers
Colleagues with knowledge of teaching practices and expertise in
the subject area can provide valuable written feedback on the quality
of the course by reading the portfolio's first five sections. The
readers' feedback on the course focuses on central questions about
the design and delivery of the course: the appropriateness of the
goals and content of the course, the adequacy of the instructional
design, the depth of understanding expected of the students, the
breadth of achievement across the whole range of learners in the
course, and the teacher's insights and future plans for the course.
Although reading the portfolio and writing feedback takes time,
the colleagues who have done this report that learning about the
teaching practices of others is stimulating and improves their own
teaching.
In 1999, faculty and administrators on five campuses began a project
to create and use course portfolios. Groups of faculty members across
a variety of disciplines from the University of Michigan, Indiana
University, the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Texas A&M
University, and Kansas State University are participating. Together,
they have developed a collection of examples of course portfolios
that both instruct and inspire. These can be found at http://www.unl.edu/peerrev/.
(See also at that site information about a conference on the course
portfolio, March 26-28, 2004.)
What is to be gained through course portfolios?
Quite practically, course portfolios provide an accurate and nuanced
record of the teacher's effort and the results of that effort. They
complete the picture suggested by grades, student evaluations, and
peer observation of classes. By documenting their work, teachers
have the option to make it available for meaningful formative and
summative evaluation during hiring, promotion, and tenure.
Also, by preserving the work of teaching, we can then spread effective
practice among faculty members, instructors, and graduate teaching
assistants. In the same way that advanced students are engaged by
reading research articles, teachers find it fascinating to read
accounts of other teachers' work and samples of student learning.
Providing access to a sample of course portfolios is a very effective
way to promote reflective practice as a part of the professional
life of college teachers.
Moreover, the use of course portfolios can generate ongoing professional
conversations of the sort we have about our disciplinary scholarship.
The material in the course portfolio is rich and can give substance
to our talk about teaching:
* By presenting examples of student work, teachers shift the focus
of conversation from presentation style to learning and understanding
* In writing and reflecting, each teacher articulates what has
been effective in promoting learning and can use those insights
to improve
* By sharing work with peers, teachers are able to get helpful
feedback from colleagues that can strengthen their work
Although building and learning to use course portfolios requires
an initial investment of time and effort, the returns on that investment
are valuable. Course portfolios can help faculty and administrators
alike make better use of time in planning, teaching, and making
effective decisions.
What would it take to make course portfolios a regular feature
of academic life? A pioneering group of teachers on each campus
can start building and reviewing course portfolios. But their efforts
will continue only when faculty, staff, and administrators explore
the many ways the course portfolio can be used. Equally important,
faculty and administrators need to communicate broadly both the
benefits of portfolios and ideas for improving the model.
References
Resources on course portfolios
March 26-28, 2004 Peer Review Project Conference: http://www.unl.edu/peerrev/conference/
Hutchings, P. (Ed.) (1998). The course portfolio. Washington, DC:
American Association for Higher Education.
Hutchings, P. (1996). Making teaching community property. Washington,
DC: American Association for Higher Education.
Bernstein, D. (2002). Representing the intellectual work in teaching
through peer-reviewed course portfolios. In S. Davis & W. Buskist,
(Eds.), The teaching of psychology: Essays in honor of Wilbert J.
McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer (215-229). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Bernstein, D.J., Jonson, Jessica, & Smith, K.L. (2000). An
examination of the implementation of peer review of teaching. New
Directions for Teaching and Learning (no. 83), pp 73-85.
Peer Review Project: http://www.unl.edu/peerrev/
Contents of a course portfolio (a handy list)
* The teacher's goals for the course
* A plan for achieving the goals
* Assignments and samples of student work that show the depth and
breadth of learning
* Reflection on how effective the course has been, and why
* Ideas for making the course better the next time
* Comments from peers on the design of the course and the students'
achievement
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