Are you looking for a way to encourage instructors to think critically about their courses and to promote reflective evaluation? We have a tool for that! We are developing an adaptive tool to meet instructors where they are. It will help faculty to assess their course design and teaching strategy.
Each academic year, the majority of universities and colleges have at least one strategic goal which focuses on faculty excellence in teaching & learning
One pathway to improving faculty excellence is professional development and continuous improvement. But how do we encourage and guide faculty to reflect on their course content, teaching strategy, student engagement and then have them think critically about whether there is room for improvement?
Facing this question at our institution, we are developing and will be implementing a web based tool that will promote self-reflection and evaluation of faculty teaching and learning strategy.
This evaluation tool will have faculty quickly assess their course design, instructor and student engagement opportunities and course content.
Based on the areas for evaluation that are agnostic to teaching modality and focused on high impact practices in the following areas: course design, engagement (student and instructor), and alignment (course and program).
When using the tool, faculty will be asked to answer a series of questions. Based on their answers, the tool will output a short summary which will highlight for instructors their strengths and weaknesses across the three main areas. The tool will also make recommendations of university and external resources that the instructor would be able to leverage in order to make progressive improvements.
It is our hope that this targeted approach will help guide instructors toward continuous improvement and self-reflection about their teaching and learning strategies. In addition, it will direct faculty to opportunities to the most relevant resources with a clear goal in mind.
In this presentation we will have the participants try a prototype of the tool allowing crowdsourced feedback. Then participants will be divided into groups to discuss various areas of evaluation the tool is designed to improve:
•Course Design – consistency and fluid feedback
•Student and Faculty Engagement
•Content Alignment within a course and course alignment within a program
Finally, each group will report out their feedback regarding the tool. This information will inform further work on the tool. Participants will have a shared understanding of the research that has gone into building the tool and that faculty development doesn’t have to be top-down, can be intrinsically-driven. Our ultimate goal is for the tool to be available at other colleges and universities.