Classroom observation of your own teaching
A major component of the program involves an observation of your teaching by a faculty mentor or member of the TLC staff. Having someone observe your teaching will begin what should be a lifelong process of seeking feedback to refine and improve what you do in the classroom. It will also give you a sense of your strengths and areas in need of development at this point in your teaching career.
This observation should be done by the faculty teaching mentor you identified within your discipline, but if that is not possible, someone from the TLC can also conduct the observation. Typically observations occur in three steps:
1. The Pre Observation Meeting
It's important to prepare for the observation. To do so, you will want to connect with the person you've asked to observe your class and settle on the details (which class, time, and date). Please pick a class session that represents how you teach in a typical session (e.g., no exam days, special trips. outside presenters).
It might also be helpful to give your observer an overview of your course, discuss your goals for the observation and whether there are any specific aspects of your teaching you would like to receive feedback on. You'll also want to be sure that your observer is willing to write up formal feedback and meet with you after the observation has been conducted to debrief. And finally, please review the guidelines presented in the next section regarding conducting the observation with your observer.
2. Conducting the Observation
During the observation, we recommend that the observer remain as unobtrusive as possible and not participate in the class. S/he should approach the observation from the perspective of a student and focus on your pedagogical approach, rather than the content you present.
We also recommend that s/he take detailed notes and write down specific examples of behaviors observed. It is often helpful to bring in a guide/form when conducting an observation to help document more specific aspects of teaching and keep the observation focused and objective. Here are a couple tools your observer may find helpful. Please share them with him/her:
3. The Post Observation Meeting
After the observation, it is important to meet as soon as possible (preferably within a week) to debrief and discuss. This meeting should be based on your and your observer's notes and reflections. During the meeting, ask questions or for specific examples, if necessary, to help clarify. Also, ask your mentor to provide examples from his/her own experiences, where relevant. This meeting should be positive and constructive and give you some concrete ideas for moving forward. Please collect your observer's observation form and any other written feedback s/he may have provided.
What to post on your ePortfolio
After this meeting, take a minute to reflect on what you learned from this experience and the conversation with your mentor. Write a narrative reflection for your ePortfolio, using the following questions to guide your thinking. You do not have to answer all of these questions, but please be sure to post a comprehensive reflection which describes what you learned with respect to your strengths and areas of improvement as well as specific ways you will use what you learned during this experience to be more effective in the future.
You should post this reflection and attach a copy of your observer's form to your ePortfolio. If you would rather keep your observer's form private, it must be submitted to Kristi Verbeke ([email protected]) via email to fulfill the program requirements.
This observation should be done by the faculty teaching mentor you identified within your discipline, but if that is not possible, someone from the TLC can also conduct the observation. Typically observations occur in three steps:
1. The Pre Observation Meeting
It's important to prepare for the observation. To do so, you will want to connect with the person you've asked to observe your class and settle on the details (which class, time, and date). Please pick a class session that represents how you teach in a typical session (e.g., no exam days, special trips. outside presenters).
It might also be helpful to give your observer an overview of your course, discuss your goals for the observation and whether there are any specific aspects of your teaching you would like to receive feedback on. You'll also want to be sure that your observer is willing to write up formal feedback and meet with you after the observation has been conducted to debrief. And finally, please review the guidelines presented in the next section regarding conducting the observation with your observer.
2. Conducting the Observation
During the observation, we recommend that the observer remain as unobtrusive as possible and not participate in the class. S/he should approach the observation from the perspective of a student and focus on your pedagogical approach, rather than the content you present.
We also recommend that s/he take detailed notes and write down specific examples of behaviors observed. It is often helpful to bring in a guide/form when conducting an observation to help document more specific aspects of teaching and keep the observation focused and objective. Here are a couple tools your observer may find helpful. Please share them with him/her:
3. The Post Observation Meeting
After the observation, it is important to meet as soon as possible (preferably within a week) to debrief and discuss. This meeting should be based on your and your observer's notes and reflections. During the meeting, ask questions or for specific examples, if necessary, to help clarify. Also, ask your mentor to provide examples from his/her own experiences, where relevant. This meeting should be positive and constructive and give you some concrete ideas for moving forward. Please collect your observer's observation form and any other written feedback s/he may have provided.
What to post on your ePortfolio
After this meeting, take a minute to reflect on what you learned from this experience and the conversation with your mentor. Write a narrative reflection for your ePortfolio, using the following questions to guide your thinking. You do not have to answer all of these questions, but please be sure to post a comprehensive reflection which describes what you learned with respect to your strengths and areas of improvement as well as specific ways you will use what you learned during this experience to be more effective in the future.
- What have you learned about your teaching from this experience?
- What themes emerged through the observer’s feedback or through your personal reflections about your teaching? Was anything particularly surprising?
- What will you continue to do in your teaching? What were your strengths and how can you build upon them?
- What specific areas for improvement were identified? From your peer’s observations and feedback? In your personal reflections?
- How will you improve your teaching practices? If you were to teach this class again, what would you do differently? Take the time to identify a few specific action steps for addressing these areas. Focus on a philosophy of continuous improvement.
- Have any of your assumptions and beliefs about teaching and learning changed as a result of this experience?
- What is one thing that you learned that will make your teaching more effective?
- What is one thing that you learned that you will apply in your future teaching experiences?
You should post this reflection and attach a copy of your observer's form to your ePortfolio. If you would rather keep your observer's form private, it must be submitted to Kristi Verbeke ([email protected]) via email to fulfill the program requirements.
Student Feedback on Your Teaching
For this particular aspect of your portfolio, you may reflect upon formal OR informal student feedback of your teaching. If you have formal feedback (i.e., end of semester student evaluations), you will most certainly want to include them in your portfolio for the job market. But for the purposes of this program, you may use formal or informal feedback for your reflection.
Informal Student Feedback
A helpful process to engage in when teaching is to ask students for midterm feedback. Most courses have formal evaluations at the end of the semester, but these only help you improve the course after it's completed. A simple, but very effective feedback strategy you can use is to collect midterm feedback from your students. Asking students for feedback at midterm gives you time to address (and correct, if necessary) issues or challenges facing the class.
If you have not had the opportunity to gather formal student feedback at this point in your teaching career or simply would like to experiment with gathering feedback at midterm (or even for a specific class session), you can focus on informal mechanisms. The easiest thing to do for this exercise is to create a worksheet for your students to complete at a mid-point in the semester (or after a specific class session, if you are only teaching that one session). Feel free to use or adapt (if you are only collecting feedback for one class session) this worksheet.
Once the responses have been collected, you will need to analyze the questions, look for themes and make some decisions on what to report back to the class. Unless you are only teaching one individual class session (e.g., as a guest lecturer), it's important that you respond to the evaluations as soon as possible (preferably the next class session) and debrief with your students.
Formal Student Feedback
If you've had the opportunity to receive end of the semester student evaluations of your teaching, you will definitely want to represent that data in your portfolio. Typically, you want to include a summary of the overall rating for your courses and if it makes sense, you can provide more detail on more specific questions from the evaluation you wish to highlight. Here are a couple of examples adapted from Seldin, Miller and Seldin (2010).
Out of the last 2 years, my average score is 4.6 out of 5 (see the table below). The score is taken from the "overall assessment of the professor" from the student evaluation forms. You can view the scores for all classes, as well as sample written comments here [since this is an ePortfolio, you can simply embed them here in the text as a linked file, there's no need for a separate Appendix]. Letters of support, notes, and emails from students are also available here [same comment here about the Appendix].
Informal Student Feedback
A helpful process to engage in when teaching is to ask students for midterm feedback. Most courses have formal evaluations at the end of the semester, but these only help you improve the course after it's completed. A simple, but very effective feedback strategy you can use is to collect midterm feedback from your students. Asking students for feedback at midterm gives you time to address (and correct, if necessary) issues or challenges facing the class.
If you have not had the opportunity to gather formal student feedback at this point in your teaching career or simply would like to experiment with gathering feedback at midterm (or even for a specific class session), you can focus on informal mechanisms. The easiest thing to do for this exercise is to create a worksheet for your students to complete at a mid-point in the semester (or after a specific class session, if you are only teaching that one session). Feel free to use or adapt (if you are only collecting feedback for one class session) this worksheet.
- Sample Midterm Evaluation Form (for students)
Once the responses have been collected, you will need to analyze the questions, look for themes and make some decisions on what to report back to the class. Unless you are only teaching one individual class session (e.g., as a guest lecturer), it's important that you respond to the evaluations as soon as possible (preferably the next class session) and debrief with your students.
- Give students a summary of their responses or themes that emerged (particularly if there were contradictory statements from different students, such as the workload being too heavy and too light).
- Explain what changes, if any, you're going to make to the class based on their feedback (and be sure to follow through!).
- Explain what changes you won't/can't make and why. Connect this back to their learning so they understand why you've chosen not to implement these suggestions.
- The questions you asked students to solicit their feedback
- The themes/ideas that emerged from the feedback you obtained
- The discussion you had with students with respect to the feedback (if applicable)
- What you learned from this experience and how it will benefit your teaching in the future
Formal Student Feedback
If you've had the opportunity to receive end of the semester student evaluations of your teaching, you will definitely want to represent that data in your portfolio. Typically, you want to include a summary of the overall rating for your courses and if it makes sense, you can provide more detail on more specific questions from the evaluation you wish to highlight. Here are a couple of examples adapted from Seldin, Miller and Seldin (2010).
Out of the last 2 years, my average score is 4.6 out of 5 (see the table below). The score is taken from the "overall assessment of the professor" from the student evaluation forms. You can view the scores for all classes, as well as sample written comments here [since this is an ePortfolio, you can simply embed them here in the text as a linked file, there's no need for a separate Appendix]. Letters of support, notes, and emails from students are also available here [same comment here about the Appendix].
Semester
Fall 2013 Spring 2013 Fall 2012 Spring 2012 |
Course
Introductory Psychology Research Methods Introductory Psychology Research Methods |
Enrollment
55 23 52 21 |
Score
4.9 4.4 4.9 4.2 |
Here's another example which goes into more specifics (this might be a better option if you only have data from one course or really want to highlight a particular aspect of your teaching)
Survey Question
Organization Enthusiasm Attitude towards students Willingness to acknowledge and answer questions Overall rating |
Fall 2013
(Chem 112) N = 63 3.86 3.90 3.94 3.94 3.89 |
Spring 2013
(Chem 111) N = 96 3.83 3.80 3.83 3.89 3.84 |
After you've added your data (along with a description of what it reflects) to your ePortfolio, please add a short reflection at the end articulating what you've learned from the evaluations. What worked well and what will you (or did you) do differently the next time you teach the course, based on student feedback?