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from the issue of November 4, 2004
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Teaching project builds on successes
BY KIM HACHIYA, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
With more than 100 faculty participants, UNL's Peer Review of Teaching Project has reached a milestone: The Anchor Press has contracted with the directors of UNL's project to write a book on Nebraska's project model.
Project co-directors Paul Savory, Amy Burnett and Amy Goodburn, along with former director Dan Bernstein, now at the University of Kansas, are to have the book completed by May. They also hosted a national symposium last spring that attracted nearly 200 faculty members from across the country interested in learning how to improve their teaching and raise the visibility of the scholarship and intellectual work that informs teaching.
UNL started the peer review of teaching project in 1994 when five faculty members attended a meeting sponsored by the American Association for Higher Education. A grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education along with funding from Academic Affairs funded the project from 1995-1998. In 1999, UNL landed a $750,000 grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts and $120,000 from the Hewlett Foundation to disseminate the model to four partner campuses. All along, Academic Affairs has provided funds to continue the on-campus effort.
The payoff, according to Savory and Goodburn, is that 101 UNL faculty members from 28 departments in eight colleges have completed the project. Enthusiasm remains high.
The key feature, Goodburn said, is that the project uses research principles to investigate teaching just as one investigates a research topic. Faculty write three "memos" during the course of their participation. The first outlines their goals and objectives for a specific course, describes the students in the course, and what the faculty members wants those students to achieve. The second memo outlines the participant's methods to reach those objectives - the textbooks, the exams, projects and papers. For the final memo, faculty collect examples of student work and analyze the material against the objectives outlined in the earlier memos.
"What's different about this is the reflection that the faculty member must do regarding the students' work," Goodburn said. "Each faculty member must write richly and reflect on what he or she has learned." The process requires self-honesty and can be an eye-opener, Goodburn said, because it's often the first time faculty have explored how they are teaching and tried to match that with what they are teaching.
Goodburn noted that one faculty member said she was surprised and embarrassed to see that she had course objectives she had not taught, objectives that were taught but not assessed, and material taught and assessed but not listed as a course objective. The project allowed this faculty member to redesign her course to more closely link her teaching with students' learning.
Faculty work in teams to share and discuss themes that are emerging from their investigations. At the end of the year, each participant links his or her memos together, then integrates the examples and analyses of student work into a course portfolio that demonstrates their teaching and students' learning. Faculty share the portfolios on Web sites and invite external reviewers to comment. Some faculty are using the portfolios to document annual review, tenure and promotion and teaching award nominations, Savory said.
Savory, an associate professor of industrial engineering, said the project advocates no specific approach to teaching, but it does demand that the participant prove that his or her approach achieves the stated goals.
Goodburn, an associate professor of English and women's studies, says faculty fear the project will be time-consuming, but she thinks it saves time later because participants don't repeat the same mistakes.
Adds Savory: "If you go through it, you realize how to define your course goals. We call it 'backwards design' because you start with your goals, then decide how to assess that, then you design your course to meet your goals. And it's good the first time, rather than having to be constantly revised."
Goodburn said the outcome for students is that courses become more rigorous, but also the courses have more clearly defined expectations.
"Students get improved teaching, and they might notice something has changed, but they're not sure why," she said. "It helps improve the students' performance and interest in a course because there are clearly articulated matches between objectives and content."
Burnett, Goodburn and Savory are program graduates. Goodburn's research focus is on classroom-based research, and she became familiar with the scholarship of learning movement when she was in graduate school. She enjoyed the project because it introduced her to others across campus and was energizing as she advanced in her career.
Savory said that while professors have chosen university teaching as a career, they often have not talked about teaching in the same way they talk about their research.
A long-term goal of the project, Goodburn said, is to build a cadre of faculty across campus who support the concept of teaching as an intellectual pursuit. Then they will help develop momentum for recognizing and valuing teaching as part of promotion and tenure activities and will be able to critically analyze teaching portfolios.
"Initiatives are bubbling up," she said, citing Chancellor Harvey Perlman's support in his State of the University Address for a professorship devoted to the scholarship of teaching.
"Ultimately, we hope to create a climate that will view that type of professorship as pro forma and not unusual," Goodburn said.
UNL has become the national leader in the subject, Savory said. Goodburn said that because UNL's efforts have been faculty driven, the project has credibility.
Plans include a campuswide workshop in March to demonstrate how to document the intellectual work of teaching.
GO TO: ISSUE OF NOVEMBER 4
NEWS HEADLINES FOR NOVEMBER 4
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Teaching project builds on successes
A Piece of University History
Lessons of Afghan conflict are topic of Forum
Professor helps track election results, projections
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