TEACHING PORTFOLIOS: INTRODUCTION AND META-GUIDE
“Essentially, Teaching Portfolios contain two basic elements: evidence of teaching and reflections on that evidence. The evidence begins with what is normally listed on curriculum vitae: lists of courses, lists of responsibilities, etc.; however, it extends beyond to include a variety of activities which have had an impact on your teaching such as Teaching Certificate programs, teaching seminars, videotapes of your lectures and classrooms, etc. The addition of these other documents adds depth to your teaching curriculum vitae. The meaningful aspect of the Teaching Portfolio lies in your written reflective statements about the evidence of your teaching.
“When most of us teach, time constraints
and other commitments force us to concentrate on what we teach, namely,
the content. In creating a Teaching Portfolio,
the key questions are why you teach and how you teach, that is, your teaching
goals and your objectives for achieving those goals.”
H.B. Rodriguez-Farrar [no date], “The
Teaching Portfolio.”
UW's Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR) provides an overview of teaching portfolios, introduced with the UW faculty's definition and purposes for teaching portfolios. CIDR's information makes an explicit distinction between developmental and evaluative portfolios; our purposes in Geography 599, of course, are developmental.
H.B. Rodriguez-Farrar [no date], “The Teaching Portfolio” provides an excellent overview, purpose, and guidelines for such documents.
The University of Texas (Austin) Center for Teaching Effectiveness has a guidebook “Preparing a Teaching Portfolio” [no date] which also provides a clear, point-by-point list of what material you could include, and how you might compile and present it.
Ohio State University’s Office of Faculty and TA Development provides a rich set of definitions and suggestions, making good use of hypertext organization.
Washington State University provides a formalized overview of and
guidelines for a teaching portfolio, “The
Teaching Portfolio at WSU,” [1996]. This is an example of the
institutionalization of teaching portfolios as an evaluative tool.
It has a list of published references that may be useful.
Suggestions
What format?
Most of the literature on teaching portfolios presumes a print format (as in a three-ring binder, with tabbed pages to provide easy access to the different sections). This would be fine for our purposes. However, presenting ideas, concepts, or characteristics, and then supporting them with student evaluations, sample exercises, or your own elaboration, are tasks for which hypertext is well-suited. Consider using HTML -- on the public WWW, on a Department server without public access, or on a CD that you can carry with you.
How to get started?
One difficulty in getting started in developing a teaching portfolio is deciding on your audience: it's hard to find your voice when you don't know the audience. For our purposes, which is to get each of you started on this path of evidence and reflection, I suggest that you select the audience with whom you’re most comfortable: yourself, a particular colleague, your faculty mentor, the colleague you wish you had. [You might show your work in progress to a colleague, and develop such a working relationship!] Alternatively (but probably less comfortably), you could select the specific purpose that is most relevant: applying for a Department teaching assistantship, supporting a nomination for a UW teaching award, or applying for an academic job.