Course Portfolio Project: important initial questions to answer

1. Course Portfolio Project:important initial questions to answer What is the scholarship of teaching? What is a course portfolio? What are the functions of course portfolio What are the key stages of the project What key documents do you need to produce? What innovations can you implement? What additional pieces can you include to research the relevant issues further? What can you do after the course implementation

2. The scholarship of teaching ‘Every course is inherently an investigation, an experiment, a journey motivated by purpose and beset by uncertainty. A course, therefore, in its design, enactment, and analysis, is as much an act of inquiry and invention as any other activity more traditionally called “research” or the scholarship of discovery.’ Lee S. Shulman, Course Anatomy: The Dissection and Analysis of Knowledge Through Teaching in Pat Hutchings, (ed) The Course Portfolio: How Faculty Can Examine their Teaching to Advance Practice and Improve Student Learning, (Washington, DC: AAHE, 1998), 5.

3. The concept of a course portfolio • The scholarship of teaching approach • Teaching portfolio versus course portfolio • The course as a unit of enquiry

4. Functions of the portfolio • Research into teaching and learning • Advanced and extended course design • Professional development and reflection • Innovation in teaching • Peer review of teaching

5. The stages of the process 1. The concept, need or question 2. Reflexive course design 3. Reflexive implementation (teaching stage) 4. Ongoing student learning documentation 5. Ongoing evaluation of outcomes 6. Final reflection and renewal

6. Key documents to produce: • Extended syllabus • A journal of course design • Project website • A diary of course implementation • An analysis of student work • Student or peer course evaluation with analysis • End of course self-evaluation

7. Example innovations to experiment with • different options of course structuring • new method of final assessment • new method of formative assessment • transferable skills integration in the course • new teaching and learning methods • new forms of student evaluation • peer participation and commentary

8. Additional reflective essays: examples of topics 1. Provide a reflective essay on your course and its innovations in relation to federal or national educational standards or institutional regulation 2. Reflect on your own learning of the course content that was the result of the teaching experience 3. Reflect on any possible changes of your own ideas about teaching and learning as a result of the project experience 4. Reflect on the relationship between your research and your teaching in this particular course as implemented in the classroom 5. Reflect on all the barriers you encountered in introducing innovations and on the ways you tried to overcome them

9. Project structure • Workshop 1: Start planning the project and website • Course design period, website design • Workshop 2: Review and present course design and the project website • Course implementation period: teach, document and reflect, develop website • Workshop 3: present your initial learning outcomes, • Review and renew the course • Implement the renewed course, • Dissemination period: publish results