Individual Consultations

Classroom assessment techniques (aka CATs) are a collection of activities to gather feedback during instruction. CATs are a great way to solicit responses from students and provide faculty with information to help them modify their pedagogy to help students learn more efficiently and effectively. Check out some of the assessment resources below to learn about techniques to be aware of and try out.

• Assessment Measures by the Office of Academic Effectiveness, Georgia Tech.
• A Comprehensive Approach to Assessment of High-Impact Practices.
• The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NIOLA).

New to Assessments? Get started with the basics and learn the foundations of planning assessments with the resource below.

Guide to Exploring and Getting Started with Assessments

Whether you are a veteran faculty member or new to academia, you make many decisions about any course you teach. Your routines and expectations for a course are part of your "classroom management." Whether you are aware of it or not, the decisions you make are guided by your personal beliefs and knowledge about how people learn. Some examples of classroom management strategies include holding students accountable, developing appropriate relationships with students, facilitating interactions that occur in the classroom that provide learning opportunities, and communicating expectations. See the following website for some great information about classroom management and how to set up your classroom for the semester:

• Foundations of Classroom Management: UCONN Center for Excellence

We provide a wide range of confidential consultation services to faculty for developmental and formative purposes on these topics. Faculty at any stage of their careers can benefit from open discussion and reflection about their teaching experiences. Faculty can request CTL to conduct a peer review (formative review only) of one of their classes. The purpose of individual consultation is to provide faculty with a one-on-one option to work through specific pedagogical challenges with support from the CTL. The process looks like the following:

• Pre-meeting: The faculty member meets with the CTL Director, to discuss course and consultation goals.
• Observation: The CTL Director will observe the faculty member's class and take notes
• Post-meeting: The faculty member will meet with the CTL Director to have a constructive conversation about their teaching. Upon conclusion of the consultation process, the faculty member will receive a written report summarizing the process and feedback. The report and the entire process are confidential, though you may include the report in your teaching portfolio to document your reflective approach to teaching.

If you're interested in scheduling a classroom observation, please fill out the form below...

By collaborating with our wonderful Instructional Designers, we can help when it comes to designing your courses and provide resources to make your vision a reality. Here are some of the recommended resources and philosophies to consider when approaching course design.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of the different outcomes and skills that educators set for their students (think, learning outcomes). Like other taxonomies, Bloom's system is hierarchical which means that escalating levels are dependent on prerequisite knowledge and skills at a lower level.

• Bloom's Taxonomy by Patricia Armstrong
• Bloom's Verbs with Matching Assessment Types

Other Resources

• A Model of Learning Objectives based on A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives by Rex Heer
• Developing Student Learning Outcome Statements by Office of Academic Effectiveness, Georgia Tech

We will be happy to review any materials you provide to your students as these are important vehicles for their learning. Ensuring that your instructional materials complement and enhance the work you require your students to do both in and outside of your class should be your goal. See the websites below for some ideas of what reviewing instructional materials entails as well as examples of instructional materials.

• Reviewing Instructional Materials: Peer Reviews of Teaching
• Design, Teach, and Engage in Online Course Design and Teaching

The purpose of the course evaluations is to collect information about students’ experiences in your course, during one semester. The goal is to provide faculty with information to identify areas of strength and areas in which they can improve their pedagogy. What is the best way to make sense of student evaluations of your teaching? What do these evaluations mean and what role can they play in the improvement of your teaching?

For more information on how to make sense of your student evaluations, learn how LeHigh University's site on the process and considerations.

Donald Schon introduced the terms “knowing in action,” “reflection in action” and “reflection on action,” and the power of reflection in teaching. His work draws on John Dewey’s work that asserts one could draw insights from experiences in the classroom through reflective practice. For Schon, reflective practice is where one becomes aware of their implicit knowledge base and learns from their experiences.

• Knowing in action is also known as tacit knowledge. This is when you do something without thinking about it at a conscious level. The more experience you have doing something, the more tacit knowledge you develop. However, this is not enough. If we are doing things in automation mode, we miss out on what is occurring around us, especially how learners are reacting to our teaching.
• Reflection in action means we are reflecting on behaviors as they happen. In other words, we are reflecting on our teaching as we are teaching.
• Reflection on action is when you reflect after you teach. What observations do you have about how you taught, how effective it was, what worked, what didn't work, etc. You also reflect on how your students reacted to your teaching and other activities you utilized while teaching. Most importantly, what would you do differently next time, now that you have reflected on action.

For other models, visit the resources below to gain a comprehensive understanding of Reflective Practices and to learn more about Schon.

• The 'What' and 'How' of Reflective Practices
• The Reflective Practitioner
• The Shon Reflective Model
• Getting started with Reflective Practice

A rubric is a tool that lists the criteria and the expectations for assignments and distinguishes the level of quality for each criterion. Rubrics can be used for any assignment in a course, or for any way in which you ask students to demonstrate what they've learned. Visit the website below for information from the American Association of Colleges and Universities value rubrics.

AAC&U: VALUE Rubrics

Your Teaching Philosophy is a personal essay that describes your approaches, values, goals, and beliefs regarding both teaching and learning while expressing how you understand your role as a faculty member in the classroom.

A great resource to help you reflect on your teaching philosophy is from "Faculty Focus, a collection of higher education teaching strategies."

There are a variety of technological tools that are available for you to use both inside and outside of the classroom. However, teaching with technology requires you to intentionally integrate the tools with your pedagogy and ensure your learning outcomes are aligned with the tool's purpose. With this intention and alignment in mind, students will deepen and enhance their learning process, all while engaging your students.