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As a result of this course, I have a better understanding of |
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How to more effectively help students learn |
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How to respond to the diverse backgrounds, interests, and abilities of students |
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Relevant resources for improving teaching and learning |
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What to do next to continue developing as a teacher |
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How to represent my teaching as a form of scholarly work |
4.7 |
Overall, I feel the course was valuable. |
We found these ratings consistent with our general impression that students in the course found it valuable. We are especially interested in developing and improving the two areas which we see as foundational for the rest of the course: dealing with student learning and working with diverse groups of students.
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Open-ended Feedback
We also asked students a series of open-ended feedback questions. Here are examples of students' answers, and our responses to their feedback:
- Question 1: What parts of the class should we keep?
- Response to feedback from Question 1
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- Question 2: What parts of the class should we change?
- Response to feedback from Question 2
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- Question 3: Other comments
- Response to students' other comments
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Question 1: What parts of the class should we keep?
Assignments:
- Portfolio stuff - very useful - philosophy of teaching.
- Teaching philosophy and Teaching-Briefs sessions.
- Teaching briefs and projects, teaching philosophy and portfolio development.
- Writing teaching philosophy, teaching project, writing in class (was very helpful in developing teaching philosophy), individual meeting to discuss teaching philosophy.
- The work with the teaching philosophy was valuable—probably the most valuable thing for me.
- The teaching philosophy statement, the teaching portfolio, pretty much everything. I don’t think there was really any extraneous material in this course. It could easily be a 2-quarter course.
- I think the teaching briefs were really useful in exposing me to the "state-of-the-art" [in reference to question 1a] topics in teaching and learning, and I picked up some useful tips.
- ... The three assignments are also good.
- Teaching briefs and practical teaching project. I found those most useful because they forced me to look into all the available resources. Finding these resources was one of the most valuable parts of the class.
- Teaching philosophy, teaching project, and group discussion regarding teaching portfolio.
Activities
- (1) The small group discussions and (2) writing down our thoughts or answers to questions.
- I enjoyed the group discussions, and the in-class reflecting writing, possibly add more.
- The reflective writing tasks made it easy to put together my philosophy statement.
- The interaction—small groups—and pragmatic parts. Lots of movement in class—chances to get to know other points of view.
- Learner-centered approach, teaching portfolio project, assessment/feedback style approach to evaluating course activities.
- I liked the wide range of topics covered in the course. I think the general structure of the class should be kept the same. I also think that the projects, briefs etc. was very useful for everybody.
- Basic syllabus and text are effective tools. Building upon each week, task, reflective writing activity is worthwhile.
Materials
- I liked McKeachie.
- Good books. Keep ‘em.
General
- I enjoyed it all…don’t see any reason to change…but I may be biased.
- Everything seemed very appropriate and necessary to my education.
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Response to feedback from Question 1:
Based on this feedback, we plan to keep the same overall approach to the course the three projects around which the course is developed. However, we will make some adjustment to the structure of the assignments and the use of class time based on other feedback we have received.
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Question 2: What parts of the class should we change?
Changes to Assignments
- If possible, start the teaching philosophy drafting process sooner.
- It seems we often ran out of time, especially with the group Briefing project—perhaps imposing time limits more strictly would help.
- I think it would be helpful to group the students by the type of portfolio they are creating (formative vs. summative). It was difficult to comment on portfolios that had different audiences from my own!
- The only problem with the course was that we would occasionally run out of time and not be able to address interesting topics more fully. Perhaps it would be good to have people slowly accrete things together toward a Teaching Portfolio—i.e. more steps rather than just two.
- The next time the course is offered, I think it would be helpful to provide more time and structure around the teaching projects. It would also be very useful to have more in-class small group discussions of the readings.
- Possibly a clearer explanation of the final whole project in the Project Schedule—Annotation, etc….
- Give us an example of a portfolio, either acknowledge that it’s impossible to cover it all in-depth and just point people to resources or focus in-depth on a few things.
- I didn’t feel that the two weeks off were necessary to finish the group project. If you felt pressed for time, you could add those meeting times back to the syllabus.
- Make clearer what the parameters are for the teaching briefs. I say this because with everyone presenting to each other, it would be helpful to know time constraints on presentation, questions to be answered, materials to be distributed so that we don’t feel we’ve done significantly less or more than our peers when all is done…and also would help presentations stay on schedule.
Changes to Topics Addressed
- More time and discussions about Course Design Principles.
- But also, I would appreciate some theoretical pieces—like maybe read Brookfield, or even discuss what happens with power and hierarchy—in a classroom and how do you address these issues.
- The philosophy of teaching may have been a little over-emphasized. Some emphasis on practical aspects of teaching (i.e. how can you become a better discussion moderator, pros and cons of using the "hot seat" etc.) may be a little more useful.
- Need more info on electronic portfolios and summarizing work to present in a portfolio.
- Consider whether the confusion over "annotation" is desirable or something to clarify…
Changes to Activities
- More structured discussion times in small groups (?). e.g. when meeting with small groups for portfolio, the group members didn’t always know what to say….
- Regular groups: I felt that I met with several different people during the quarter, and it was valuable to learn from them. But, we spent some time getting to know each other and each other’s disciplines. It would be nice to group scientists together, humanities students together, etc. I felt I had the most useful discussions with people in fields similar to mine.
- Multiple group interactions within a course session.
- Often group work with people from other disciplines was interesting, but not terribly relevant. Maybe it would be more productive to group people by subject/discipline.
No changes to suggest
- Hmmm…can’t think of anything that really should go.
- A few class periods in particular felt a little rushed—like we were trying to cover too much material at any one time. Then again, I don’t know what I’d advise you to drop!
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Response to feedback from Question 2:
When we organize this course, we try to consider which areas of content and activities work best with a large-group interdisciplinary discussion, which are best suited to independent individual work, and which might be better suited to smaller groups with related interests -- for example, academic disciplines, teaching situations (large or small class, distance learning, etc), or extent of teaching experience.
We have tried this course with relatively more structure (for example, assigning groups and providing a group task checklist) and relatively less (for example, letting people choose their own groups and respond to open-ended questions). Judging from the feedback, we probably could have improved last year's course with relatively more structure and clarity of expectations than we provided, and we will look for ways to adjust assignments and activities appropriately.
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Question 3: Other comments about the class
General Comments
- This has been an informative and interesting course. I thank you for helping me to see teaching from the learner’s perspective. Great course!
- This class has helped me prepare and better understand what is expected of me when applying for a job, and what to expect when teaching at college level for the first time.
- I think this was a great course because of how practical it was for me in learning how to think about teaching. I would recommend this class to anyone who wants to teach at the university level!
- I really appreciated your openness and your expertise.
- The workload was perfect, and all the work was useful in helping me reflect upon teaching and learning.
- Thank you for an exceptionally though-provoking, personally and professionally challenging course that has stimulated my future work in teaching and learning.
- The exercise where we thought about moments in our own education where we had positive, memorable experiences was great. Combining that with the knowledge of diverse learning styles helped me to see that different students will have those experiences in response to very different situations.
- I was very happy with having the opportunity to get started on my teaching portfolio. There was some redundancy between this class and [the Teaching Engineering course], but I found the extra scope (social sciences and humanities) useful in its own right.
Suggestions for Change
- It would be nice if we have a summary of each session’s issues posted on the website.
- I would’ve liked to see actual examples of portfolios. I felt like I had to go searching on the Internet and didn’t find examples from CIDR or the UW.
- Portfolio work was interesting. More examples of full portfolios might be helpful. Thanks.
- Better clarification about teacher portfolio assignment expectations. Incorporate information referencing question #1b.
- In general, most of the exercises were very useful, however, the instructions/course of action were sometimes vague.
Finding the Right "Fit"
- The course seems mostly geared toward people with some teaching experience. I would appreciate more attention on issues for those that haven’t, on topics such as course design, issues needing to be addressed, etc. Otherwise maybe a separate course would be appropriate.
- In-class presentations got long—I learned the most by trying myself or else reading about the stuff and discussing in class, sometimes it was hard for me to focus in class because the ideas/concepts weren’t particularly difficult to understand. I was more interested in practical applications of teaching techniques or development of my portfolio. We didn’t use the book McKeachie very much, so it’s up to me to go and learn it—which is fine.
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This class remains a pleasure to teach, and we appreciate students' constructive feedback to help us improve the course from one year to the next.
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Departments represented in the course, Winter 2003
Here is a list of departments represented in GRDSCH 630 during Winter 2003:
- Anthropology
- Art
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Business Administration
- Chemical Engineering
- College of Forest Resources
- Computer Science and Engineering
- Economics
- Electrical Engineering
- Genome Center
- Information School
- Nursing
- Oral Biology
- Public Affairs
- Public Health
- Technical Communication
- Urban Design & Planning
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