Tips from the AEJMC Teaching Committee
Documenting and Demonstrating Quality Teaching
By Amanda Sturgill
AEJMC Standing Committee on Teaching
Elon University
(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, July 2019 issue)
When applying for jobs or for tenure and promotion, quality teaching can be one of the hardest things to document. There are no impact factors or well-understood committees, and the burden is on you to demonstrate that your methods are effective.
Here are some tips for assembling a teaching dossier.
1. Teaching is not one-size-fits-all, and you should be able to articulate the values that you prize as an educator. If this is hard for you, try answering the following questions:
• What do you think is the best way to learn?
• How do you know the students have successfully?
• If students can take away only one big-picture idea from a course with you, what do you want that idea to be?
The answers to these questions can help you identify what you value as a teacher, or what you can call your teaching philosophy. It is helpful to have a written and memorized “elevator pitch” about your teaching philosophy before heading onto the job market.
2. Assemble multiple types of evidence. Student evaluations can be helpful but can also be problematic. They are one type of evidence; they should not be the only evidence you give.
Other helpful types include:
• Syllabi and assignments you have created
• Student works, particularly if you use revision and have before and after versions that show how your students progressed over time
• Evidence that students succeed in using what you have taught them. This can be in the form of letters from graduates about how they use what they learned in your class on the job or notes from colleagues who teach higher-level classes based on what students learned from you that speak to their preparation.
• Judgements of student works such as reviews of papers or creative works or even awards. It can pay off to encourage your students to submit for awards, conferences and other places where their work will be reviewed.
3. Contextualize. Even if you are speaking to colleagues in your own department, you can’t assume they know the particularities of what you do. I teach in a multidisciplinary communication department, for example, and my colleagues in film have to explain their field in order for me to understand why their techniques are important.
When you write it up, remember the audience for your documentation. Whether it is a job application or a promotion review, administrators and possibly faculty in other fields will be looking at your evidence and need to be able to understand it. The “explain it to your mom” method you might use in a communication class can come in handy here.
4. It’s ok to grow, but it needs to show. New classes are often rough the first time, and sometimes the mix of students in a course makes it really challenging. You may try different things, tweaking an assignment or dropping an activity that went over poorly.
Remember to make notes of the things that you do and why you do them. These will help you later as you document your ability to think as critically about your teaching as you do about your scholarship.
5. When it comes to peer observations, help the observer understand what you are doing. It’s common to be required to have a peer or administrator observe a class, particularly as a student instructor or pre-tenure. These observations and the write-up from them goes much better if you prepare the observer for what he or she will be seeing. It’s helpful to sit down with the observer before the class to look at the syllabus, describe the general purpose and arc of the course and to describe what you will be doing that day and how that fits into that arc. You can also prepare the students by letting them know the class before that an observer will be visiting so that they will act as they usually do.
Demonstrating quality teaching is telling a story about who you are and what you have done. Tell a good one.
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