COURSE INTRODUCTION
Catalog Description
3 credits. An intensive study of the issues, policies, and principles associated with teaching in higher education. Topics include history and philosophy of college teaching, internal and external influences on instruction, faculty and students, instructional models and methods, documenting and assessing teaching, and instructional improvement.
Intended Participants
This course is intended to serve students who have an interest in exploring teaching in higher education at the two-year college, college, and university level. The course is designed to help prepare future college professors for their roles as teachers and to help current two-year and four-year college instructors to continue to increase their effectiveness as teachers. This course is also intended to respond to the expanding interests and needs of two related groups of graduate students: (1) current or future academic or nonacademic administrators in postsecondary education who wish to increase their awareness of the most important issues and practices related to the effectiveness of college teaching and (2) future higher education scholars with special interests in issues related to college teaching.
Course Methods
This course is a doctoral-level seminar. One definition of a seminar is a group of advanced students studying under a professor with each doing original research and all exchanging results through reports and discussions. That is how we will approach the class this term.
Course Objectives
This course is intended to help you think about teaching and learning at the college and university level. You will have the opportunity to develop or enhance some teaching skills as a result of your work this semester, although the development of particular teaching skills is not the exclusive aim of the course. By the end of the course, you should be able to do the following:
- Incorporate learning principles relevant to planning learning experiences for college students.
- Realize both the value and the limitations of using student-learning outcomes.
- Consider differences in the diverse cultures represented by today’s college students and consider how you might best meet the needs of all students.
- Evaluate a variety of teaching strategies.
- Understand the importance of evaluation in the teaching/learning process.
- Plan evaluation activities to help students learn.
- Concentrate on important aspects of instruction when observing others teach or when analyzing your own teaching.
- Analyze the effects of instructional techniques or strategies when observing instructional situations.
- Integrate technology with teaching pedagogy to effectively and efficiently facilitate student learning.
- Ascertain strategies for instructional improvement.
- Locate resources related to teaching and teaching improvement
Required readings
Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Barkley, E. (2009). Student engagement techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Angelo, T.A. and Cross, K.P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Optional reading:
Nilson, L. (2016). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
The following activities are required to assist you in fulfilling the objectives for this course.
Onsite and online class participation (40%): Ongoing
This class is anchored to your participation. If you are not present and active, both onsite and online, then the overall effect of the course will be compromised. You should plan for active and engaged participation. For the onsite portion, this means reading and responding thoughtfully and critically to class discussion. For the online portion, it means sharing your work on a class blog and commenting on other students’ contributions. You should plan to respond to at least 5 students per week, and you should work as a class to ensure that all students receive some responses. Your posts will be graded on timeliness of submission and on quality of contribution. To offer a few specifics:
- Blog Posts:
- Use semi-formal language (this is not a formal academic paper, but you are writing for a course)
- Write from the perspective that fits your own goals (e.g. if you plan to be an administrator, write from that perspective; if you plan to be a faculty member, write from there)
- Write with the intent to share ideas and information with your fellow classmates
- Responses to posts:
- Offer at least one compliment; focus on something the student did well
- Offer at least one suggestion; this could be a way to extend what the student described, or it could be a suggestion for improvement. The idea is to move beyond “nice job” and offer a more nuanced response
- Book review posts:
- Offer a brief summary/description in your own words; other students will have read the same text, so you don’t need to offer a detailed summary. Instead think of it as your big take away.
- Offer a personal reflection or scholarly critique; consider the following questions as prompts for your response:
- what do you agree with?
- what do you disagree with?
- what are the key takeaways for class/teaching/administration?
- Tagging: Use the tag #ahe603
- Timing
- Post by 11:59pm central on Saturdays
- Respond by 11:59pm central following Wednesdays
Note on a missed class session: You should plan to attend each class session. If you must miss a class session, you will write a book review (the Nilson text would be a good choice, but others are optional) and submit it on your blog for your peers, to your instructor for a grade, and to a journal for potential publication.
Learning module (20%)
You will choose a topic from a list of options or determine your own (but it should be something beneficial to all of your classmates and be directly related to teaching and learning at the college level). You will prepare a video of no more than 6 minutes in which you teach the class about your topic. You should make the video of the module available to the class (for example through youtube or vimeo).
Be sure to comment on videos. Note: it will be time consuming to watch and respond to 15 videos. Do not wait until the last minute to begin. Remember that we decided you will respond with one thing the student did well and on thing the student could do to improve or extend the video.
Final project (40%)
For your final project, you will choose between two options:
Option 1: Scholarly teaching or course portfolio (recommended for masters students and for doctoral students in colleges other than Education). For this option, you will create an online portfolio where you will showcase either a single course (course portfolio) or alternately represent your teaching more broadly (a teaching portfolio). This option will be particularly useful for those who are seeking to become college faculty after graduation from a graduate program. Your portfolio should generally include the following components: a teaching philosophy statement, documentation of your teaching, evidence of teaching effectiveness, and sample teaching materials. More information is available at: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/teaching-portfolios/#components.
Option 2: Research paper on a college teaching topic (recommended for doctoral students in the College of Education). In this option, you will do a traditional social science research paper related to college teaching. You should target a journal (such as the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, College Teaching, Journal of Faculty Development, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Journal of Online Teaching and Learning, or a journal within your specific field.). Generally, your research paper should have an introduction, a literature review, a description of your research methods (quantitative, such as surveys, or qualitative, such as interviews), a summary of your findings, and a discussion and conclusion. This paper should be approximately 15-20 pages. (note: if you plan to submit this paper to a journal for peer review and potential presentation or publication, you will need to complete the Institutional Review Board process).
After you select your Option, you will complete the following assignments:
In class elevator pitch (10%). Simple state the plans for the portfolio (teaching or course) or alternately the plans for research (including the research question, research methods, and target journal). You will have approximately 3 minutes for this pitch (like a three minute thesis), and students will offer you suggestions.
Project Presentation (10%). You will present your work in a scholarly presentation, where you share samples from your portfolio or summarize your research report.
Portfolio or paper (20%). This is the actual project itself. You will likely receive feedback on your project during your presentation.
You should plan to email your final paper or a link to your final project to cmajor@ua.edu
Outline of Section Areas
- Introduction to the course and the research on college teaching
- Meet your classmates
- Review the syllabus
- Improve the syllabus
- Learn the basics of the research on college teaching
- Professors and teaching
- Characteristics of effective teachers
- Characteristics of effective courses
- Philosophy of teaching
- Instructional methods and strategies
- Lecture
- Active and collaborative learning
- Students and learning
- Theories of learning and learning styles
- Motivation
- Engagement
- Assessment and grading
- Learning outcomes
- Classroom assessment
- Grading
- Student evaluation of instruction
