Tools and Resources

This document describes a specific strategy that provides a collaborative learning experience for students.

Item Analysis (a.k.a. Test Question Analysis) is an empowering process that enables you to improve mutiple-choice test score validity and reliability by analyzing item performance over time and making necessary adjustments. Knowledge of score reliability, item difficulty, item discrimination, and crafting effective distractors can help you make decisions about whether to retain items for future administrations, revise them, or eliminate them from the test item pool. Item analysis can also help you to determine whether a particular portion of course content should be revised or enhanced.

An easy to use graphical representation of updated Bloom's Taxonomy congitive domain, including definitions.

This list of inclusive teaching strategies was created as part of the Schreyer Institute's Creating Inclusive Courses workshop. The workshop activity is also available in this repository. The list was compiled over many years and is intended to help instructors recognize what they might already be doing to demonstrate that all students are welcome contributors to the course learning community. This is not a "checklist." Creating inclusive course environments requires sincerity, intentionality, and reflection, not simply enacting a list of strategies. These strategies are most effective when combined with other efforts such as critical self-reflection reflection, learning about antiracist pedagogies, and taking steps to decolonize our classrooms.

This resource offers principles of trauma-informed teaching and recommendations instructors
might consider as they are developing trauma-informed practices for their own courses.

This is a quick start guide for engaging in self reflection on teaching. It can be helpful to support the production of the reflection portion of the dossier for P&T and/or annual review for Penn State faculty.

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

This document was created to provide you with a source of options for gathering data on teamwork assignments and projects. You may choose to adopt one of the examples as is, combine elements from several of the examples, or use the examples to identify characteristics that correspond to particular aspects of your assigned work, course content, or student population.

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

In-depth discussion of planning and writing a case study. Key steps discussed include identifying the reason for using a case study; drafting the case; and piloting and revising it.

Penn State’s Faculty Assessment of Teaching Framework assesses teaching using evidence from three sources, peer review, self-assessment, and student feedback. The framework also identifies four Elements of Effective Teaching, which provide a foundation of understanding, advance a shared language for communication, and serve as standards against which the combined sources of evidence are judged. Academic units may also use the elements as an invitation to discuss other important aspects of effective teaching. This document includes teaching examples by element.

Instructors are the most important determinant of student participation in the Student Educational Experience Questionnaire (SEEQ). Students are more likely to complete the questionnaire if they know that instructors read their feedback and value it as a source of ideas to improve the course.

Practical suggestions for writing exams and techniques for creating questions from Boston University School of Public Health.

This document describes several strategies that can be used to make concepts "concrete" and provide tactile material that can help students learn.

Three-page overview of the steps in documenting one's teaching through a portfolio.

This file describes the characteristics of adult learners and strategies for instructors who teach them.