Mentoring and Teaching

1. Mentoring and Teaching Pat Rogers, Associate Vice President: Teaching and Learning Wilfrid Laurier University Annual Academic Administrators Workshop Balsillie School of International Affairs August 19, 2013

2. AGenda • Role of the chair in encouraging teaching improvement • Getting started • Characteristics of good educational practice • Formative versus summative evaluation • Teaching improvement options • What if it all goes wrong?

3. Role of chair • Assume leadership for creating a climate that values teaching • Communicate high expectations for teaching • Make teaching community property - encourage discussion about teaching • Lead the development of and implement a plan for supporting new colleagues

4. Setting the tone • Begin with a conversation among colleagues • Develop program learning outcomes • Discuss values and teaching mission, based on student learning outcomes • Develop criteria and standards for evaluating teaching performance, tied to values and mission

5. Characteristics of good practice • Encourages contact between students and faculty • Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students • Encourages active learning • Gives prompt feedback • Emphasizes time on task • Communicates high expectations • Respects diverse talents and ways of learning Chickering and Gamson, 1987

6. Quality dimensions of High Impact practices • Performance expectations set at appropriately high levels • Significant investment of time and effort by students over an extended period of time • Interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters • Experiences with diversity • Frequent, timely and constructive feedback • Periodic structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning • Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications • Public demonstration of competence Kuh and O’Donnell, 2013

7. Characteristics of effective classroom practice • Preparation and organization • Content knowledge • Clarity • Rapport with students • Enthusiasm • Student engagement Chism, 1999

8. Formative versus summative evaluation • Evaluation for summative purposes focuses on information needed to make personnel decisions (merit, tenure, promotion, sabbatical) • Evaluation for formative purposes is designed to help faculty improve their teaching

9. Formative versus summative (cont.) • Those who provide formative feedback should not also be summative evaluators (Centra, 1993a) • For summative evaluation of teaching to be fair and reliable, data needs to be gathered: • from multiple sources (ex. students, peers, self, teaching contributions beyond the classroom) • by multiple methods (ex. teaching dossiers, review of course materials, letters of evaluation, course evaluations, in-class review,) • at multiple points in time (ongoing formative feedback and scheduled summative feedback) (Chism, 1999).

10. teaching improvement- self • Classroom assessment (Angelo, 1993) • Course buddies • Student focus groups • Video-tape teaching/micro-teaching

11. teaching improvement - others • Observe a colleague • Review student ratings/course material with a colleague • Peer-pairing arrangement with a trusted colleague in the same or other discipline • Teaching squares (see EDEV website) • Consultation with a TSS professional • Join a learning community • Course design institute

12. Value of Peers as mentors • Act as a sounding board, help find direction, give insight, provide constructive specific formative feedback, foster success • Open to different ideas (don’t know it all) • Subject matter expertise • Pedagogical strategies specific to the discipline