Tools and Resources

This strategy involves posing relevant open-ended problems for students to discuss.

This is the second report of the Committee on Assessing Teaching Effectiveness submitted to Kathy Bieschke, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. This report is recommends options for improving future evaluation of teaching for tenure, promotion, annual review, and reappointment. The committee's recommendations address the unacceptable over-reliance on student feedback in the process of evaluation--specifically the numerical ratings of the Student Ratings of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTE) and the ‘Open Ended Item’ responses, which serve to amplify systemic inequities and hierarchies within our teaching community. The first report of the committee provided recommendations for evaluating teaching for promotion & tenure during the pandemic of 2020.

This is the committee's second report [for Report 1, see Appendix M in the NEW: 2020-2021 Administrative Guidelines for Policy AC23 (formerly HR23): Promotion and Tenure Procedures and Regulations]

Created for faculty and other academics who are interested in getting involved in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Recommended resources include the following topics: "Preparing to do SOTL," "Books on SOTL Research," "Journals for Educational Research," and "Videos of SoTL researchers discussing different aspects of SOTL."

Selected resources for interdisciplinary education created by Penn State librarian Rosemary Mack.

General recommendations for adapting teaching and assessment to a synchronous, remote course environment. This document was offered as page one of a web resource for faculty who transformed their courses from face-to-face to remote learning environments due to campus closures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is available here for archival purposes.

In this rationale, Natalie Parker, Director of CETL and Distance Education, Texas Wesleyan University, advocates for replacing high stakes exams with multiple-attempt, low-stakes quizzes. The “testing effect”, in which students recall more information about a topic after testing than after re-reading the material, was first reported by Abbott in 1909. Subsequent studies have confirmed that repeated testing is an effective way for students to recall material.

Resources for teaching writing-intensive courses or integrating writing into any course; source is the WAC (Writing across the Curriculum) Clearinghouse.

This document contains a list of websites and other resources for faculty who teach in large classes.

This document describes how to use role-playing exercises to help students grasp certain concepts.

Round Robin is a systematic technique that allows students to brainstorm answers to questions. It allows all students an opportunity to contribute.

This two-page handout provides a basic explanation of how to make and use rubrics to improve grading. Print references included.

This excerpt from "Student Learning Assessment: Options and Resources" provides three sample rubric types including simple, detailed and holistic. These rubrics can help to improve the grading process. The publication was written by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

This rubric could be used by faculty colleagues to evaluate course objectives.

A rubric for assessing oral communication work.