School of Public Health and Information
Sciences
December 2, 2011
Strategies for Enhancing Your Teaching Effectiveness
Marie Kendall Brown, Ph.D., Assistant Director
Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning
Workshop Goals
Sessions are designed to accomplish the following goals:
• Share best practices and emerging scholarship in
teaching and learning,
• Strengthen a unit-wide culture of conversation about
teaching and learning,
• Provide an interactive and collaborative learning
experience,
• Offer participants concrete teaching strategies and “takeaways” for immediate implementation,
• Disseminate relevant resources and scholarship for
further exploration and learning.
SPHIS Workshop Summary
Since October 2010, ten workshops have
been offered on topics such as:
Active Learning
Rubrics
Assessing Critical Thinking
Instructional Technology
Syllabus Design
Improving Retention of
Information
45% of SPHIS faculty have attended 5 or
more sessions
My Key Assumptions
• You are an expert and critical thinker in your field.
• You are open to thinking in new ways about
teaching content that is very familiar to you.
• We are sharing ideas, strategies, and insights as
teachers and learners.
• Talking about teaching effectiveness is part of an
ongoing, intentional conversation that is critical to
enhancing student learning.
Session Objectives
 Discuss four lenses of practice for becoming a
critically reflective teacher and explore your own
development in each area of practice
 Gather resources and strategies for documenting
your own good teaching
 Identify an action plan for enhancing your teaching
effectiveness
Chalk Talk
What makes an effective teacher?
Student Perspective
Faculty Perspective
Seven Principles for Good
Practice
Good practice:
 Encourages student-faculty contact
 Encourages cooperation among students
 Encourages active learning
 Gives prompt feedback
 Emphasizes time on task
 Communicates high expectations
 Respects diverse talents and ways of
learning
Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). “Seven Principles for Good Practice in
Undergraduate Education.” The Wingspread Journal. Racine, WI: Johnson Foundation.
Critically Reflective
Practice
• Demonstrates that you are reflective and purposeful about your
teaching
• Allows you to articulate and make explicit your goals as a teacher
• Helps you identify and use appropriate teaching approaches to
achieve your teaching goals
• Helps you think through the specific ways you want to make a
difference in the lives of your students
• Gain greater awareness of your progress and development
• Guides you in determining your path to professional improvement
In short: It promotes genuine reflection about teaching.
Why be a critically reflective
teacher?
To garner an increased awareness of
one’s teaching from as many different
vantage points as possible.
Reflective Practice
Process
• Questioning what, why, and how one does things
and asking what, why, and how others do things
• Seeking alternatives
• Keeping an open mind
• Comparing and contrasting
• Seeking the framework, theoretical basis, and/or
underlying rationale
• Viewing from various perspectives
• Asking “What if..?”
Roth, R. A. (1989, March-April). Preparing the reflective practitioner: Transforming the apprentice
through the dialectic. Journal of Teacher Education, 40(2), 31-35.
Some Questions for Reflective
Practice
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What worked well?
Why?
What did not work well?
Why not?
What will I do the same next time?
What will I do differently next time?
Brookfield’s Four Lenses of
Practice
Critically reflective teachers seek a greater
awareness of teaching by gathering
information from:
1. Self-reflection
2. Students’ eyes
3. Our colleagues’
perspectives
4. Theoretical literature
Brookfield, S. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Think-Pair-Share
• What is one thing that
you have learned
about teaching from
each lens of practice?
• How has each lens
influenced how you
think about your own
teaching
effectiveness?
Self-Reflection
Students’
Eyes
Colleagues’
Experiences
Theoretical Literature
Self-Reflection: Tools and
Resources
– Analysis of what works and what doesn’t
and why (formal and informal)
– Course portfolio
– Teaching portfolio
– Philosophy of teaching statement
– Your own teaching and learning
experiences
– Teaching Perspectives Inventory:
http://www.teachingperspectives.com/
Students’ Eyes: Tools and
Resources
–Student evaluations of teaching (SETs)
–Classroom assessment techniques (CATs)
–Student reflection papers
–Course pre- and post-tests
–Prior knowledge probes
–Mid-semester feedback
questions
–Formative feedback
A few words about SETs
WARNING: There are limitations!
SETs are:
– a snapshot of students’ reactions and experiences
at one moment in time
– student self-report
SETs don’t:
– assess the developmental progression of your
course (e.g., curriculum design, teaching
development; your ongoing professional
development)
– assess student motivation
Clayson, D. E. (2009, April). Student evaluations of teaching: Are they related to what students learn? A Metaanalysis and review of the literature. Journal of Marketing Education, 31(1), 16-30.
Our Colleagues’ Experiences:
Tools and Resources
– Conversations with those both in and outside of
your course/practicum setting (informal)
– Unit-wide or university-wide cohorts, committees,
groups, etc.
– Mentoring relationships (in or outside of UofL)
– Peer classroom observations and debriefing
– Programs with peer-to-peer sharing
– Chronicle of Higher Education
– Inside Higher Education
Theoretical Literature: Tools and
Resources
Teaching and Learning Center Websites
• MSU: http://fod.msu.edu/OIR/index.asp
• U-M: http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/teachings.php
Teaching Listservs: Tomorrow’s Professor Mailing List
• http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgibin/tomprof/postings.php?way=5
Journals in the Field
• New Directions in Teaching and Learning
• Journal on Excellence in College Teaching
Delphi’s Resource Library
• http://www.librarything.com/catalog/DelphiCenter2011
Your Action Plan
What are the key insights and take-aways
you discovered during today’s workshop?
What are three things you will do starting
today to enhance your teaching
effectiveness?