Tools and Resources

This book describes a research-based approach to teaching science to help students gain conceptual understanding. Originally based on biology courses, the book describes an approach rooted in active learning, backward design, and assessment.

Often called “peer observation of teaching ” or “peer evaluation of teaching,” peer review of teaching (PRT) involves seeking feedback from an informed colleague for the purposes of improving one’s practice (formative assessment) and/or evaluating it (summative assessment). Texas A&M University's Faculty Performance Evaluation Task Force recommended having separate review processes for formative and summative assessment using multiple sources of data from students, peers, administrators, and as well as faculty themselves for evaluating teaching. Includes institutional perspectives and supporting videos from the University of Texas.

In higher education, peer review stands as the prime means for ensuring that scholarship is of the highest quality, and from it flows consequential assessments that shape careers, disciplines, and entire institutions. While peer review is well established as a means of evaluating research across the disciplines, it is less common in the assessment of teaching. Yet it is no less useful, since it can improve what Ernest Boyer has called the “scholarship of teaching and learning” by enhancing instructional and faculty development, by bolstering the integrity of personnel decisions, and by enabling more intentional and mutually supportive communities of scholar teachers. This guide is intended as an introduction to the basics of peer review, including its purposes, challenges, and common practices. The primary audience for this guide consists of departments, programs, or schools considering implementing peer review, although individual faculty, staff, and students are likely to find what follows interesting, as well.

This policy outlines the conditions associated with academic freedom for faculty members at Penn State.

This resource was developed by the Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition and the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge (ALL IN), with input from Nancy Thomas, Senior Advisor to the President of AAC&U and Executive Director of the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE). In each section are suggestions for addressing the potential areas of concern that may pose a challenge in the post-election period. Updated in 2024; the group Ask Every Student was involved in creating the original document in 2020.

The Center for Teaching Excellence at Boston College provides this resource to help instructors decide whether and when to talk about the election in the post-election period. It outlines factors you might want to consider as you plan your responses and a few different paths you could take in your response. While students appreciate when instructors respond in some way to upheavals in the wider world, you do have options. When deciding how to talk about the election, it can be helpful to bear in mind your own goals for teaching and learning, the fact that major events can be distracting and make it more difficult to teach and learn, and that students in your class may have differing perceptions of what is at stake in the election in light of their own histories and identities.

A self-paced module focusing on the design of pedagogically effective PowerPoint presentations.

This book is a collection of ten articles from college science professors who use investigative learning (also known as inquiry-based instruction) to help students understand how science works. The articles explain how students--including non-majors--can learn to do real-world science.

Promoting Supportive Academic Environments for Faculty with Mental Illnesses: Resource Guide and Suggestions for Practice. This guide focuses on ways to make college and university campuses more accessible for faculty with mental disabilities. It provides concrete suggestions for creating a “culture of access” by offering effective strategies for promoting inclusive language, managing accommodations, and revising policies around recruitment, hiring, and leaves of absence. The guide provides a review research on the experiences of academic faculty with mental illnesses and recommendations for academic administrators and colleagues to promote a more welcoming work environment in higher education.

A list of SoTL journals compiled by librarians at Illinois State University. These journals are not STEM-specific, but some of their articles do address STEM teaching topics.