Your Teaching and Learning Philosophy--Do you have one?

One common assignment throughout the ECE-EDU program is to have students write their Teaching Philosophy. While being an important assignment for both beginning teachers and seasoned veterans alike to critically think about how they teach, why and what they can do better, I’ve heard through my faculty that this is a difficult assignment for many. So I decided to do a little research and put together a few ideas for my faculty to use to help their students construct this philosophy statement.

Along the way, I stumbled upon several good resources geared toward writing a teaching philosophy statement for college faculty. It occurred to me that we don’t ask our faculty and prospective faculty for their statements, unlike other institutions of higher learning (especially the four years). Why not? Our job is to teach so that students will learn particular subject content. Wouldn’t it be appropriate to ask prospective faculty what their philosophy/attitude/ideas are toward teaching and learning, especially in an online environment? Or do you do this in the interview process?

I understand that many programs at our level of the educational spectrum do not require instructors to have taken any methods of teaching, adult learning or other education courses. We want our faculty to be SMEs or Subject Matter Experts. This does not guarantee that anyone who is knowledgeable in a certain subject can effectively impart this knowledge to anyone else, let alone assess the effectiveness of that process. I am lucky to have been trained as an educator and have taken many methods and theory courses and my faculty group are also trained educators. But what about the rest of the faculty? Shouldn't SME's have some idea about how they teach and why they do what they do?

What is a Statement of Teaching and Learning Philosophy? It’s a brief (about 1 page) statement presenting personal ideas of the teaching and learning process and the instructor’s role in these processes. It is important to give examples from your own experience, either your teaching experience or your learning experience as a student over the years. Some areas that could be addressed in this statement include answers to the following questions:

• What are my or views on how adults learn and how can I facilitate that learning?
• What goals do I have for my students and why?
• How do I transform my concepts about teaching and learning and goals for my students into classroom practices?
• How do I know that my classroom practices are effective? What assessments do I use?
• What qualities do you believe an effective teacher should have?
• What should your students expect from you?

Another interesting idea I found for college instructors was a “syllabus version” of the Teaching Philosophy which is a much shortened version of the larger philosophy. We do have a general expectation statement in every course but that was written by someone else and most of us probably haven’t read that in years. Why not write your own “syllabus version” of your philosophy? Really think about how you teach our adult and non-traditional students, why you teach in that fashion, what you expect of students, what they can expect from you and how all this relates to your goals (and the students goals) for the course. This will help you clarify the teaching process for you and inform your students of your general ideas and goals.

For more information see:

• Step-by-Step Tutorial U of Minnesota
• Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement: Ohio State Univ Center for Adv of Teaching

Do You Rubric?

Several years ago, when my older daughter was in junior high school, she came home complaining about a project for one of her classes. I asked her what was it about and of course she rolled her eyes and said, “I don’t know Mom. We haven’t gotten the rubrics yet!” And with that she stomped off. Other than that being an example of typical junior high behavior, the word that caught my attention was “rubrics” (and the fact that she used that big of a word!). Our colleagues in the K-12 world have been using rubrics for a long time but it hasn’t really caught on in higher ed.

When grading assignments or other assessments, how do you grade? Do you grade on feeling —"I know this work is good"? Or do you have a set of criteria by which you evaluate the student’s work?

Rubrics are statements which define the requirements for the learning activity, criteria for evaluating the learning activity, and degree of quality for each criterion. While this seems like a daunting task for faculty, rubrics are not that difficult to write. They do take some time to determine the evaluation criteria (or elements) and the quality levels of each criteria.

Writing a rubric:

1. First, determine what is important in the learning activity. What will be assessed?
2. Identify these elements or criteria for evaluation.
3. What are the levels of quality for each element? How many levels will be needed?
4. Determine the characteristics for attaining each element. What are the descriptors of quality?
5. Assign point values to each element and its degree of quality.

There are advantages to using rubrics when grading assignments.

• Rubrics clearly define the activity and how it will be assessed.
• Rubrics provide a method for meaningful feedback to the student for improvement.
• All assignments evaluated against the same criteria.

Rubrics are also useful for the student by clearly defining the activity and what is needed to be successful. This helps students take control of their own learning and performance in class.
Rubrics can be used as a guide while completing the learning activity and as a self-assessment tool prior to submitting the assignment for grading.

Rubrics can be in any format that works for you and your students. Some faculty like a grid-like format, others like a narrative format. In addition, there are several online rubric-generators that prompt you through the creation process.

Rubric Design Studio

Rubric Builder

Rubistar
Advantages of Rubrics
List of Rubrics Builders

Next post, how to grade with a rubric.

Moldy Oldie News Items

I think a lot of instructors will be surprised NEXT semester when their spring course is duped for summer and they find all their News items still in the course. Or, if you receive some other instructor’s section, you’ll get all their News items.

This can be a good thing or a bad thing. If you want to recycle some of the News items, this is a nice feature as you won’t have to retype. However, you will need to sort out the News entries and reorder them for your new class. You might also need to delete some semester specific items. All of this takes a bit of time on your part, but once you figure out what to keep and what to toss, this is pretty slick.

And now through the magic of technology and the magic fingers of our training team, we have tutorials on how to delete and reorder those News items. See: http://at.ccconline.org/faculty/wiki/Tech_Tools_-_D2L_-_News#Tutorials