In some sense, my involvement
with portfolios dates back to the spring of 1990, long before I had even heard the term. At that time, my service as
department chair was coming to an end, and for a number of reasons (none of
which had anything to do with superior knowledge about the art of teaching) the
dean had selected me as the new director of the College of Arts and Sciences
Teaching Improvement Center. I had always taken pride in the belief that I was
a good teacher, but, as is the case with most college teachers, I had no formal
training in teaching. I knew nothing about teaching theory or developmental
frameworks, and so I attended a variety of conferences and workshops on the
subject as preparation for my new position. At these, I learned many things;
in particular, I became familiar with the notion of a teaching portfolio. When
I was nominated, several years later, for Temple University's Great Teacher
Award, I put this new knowledge to work by developing my own teaching portfolio
(and was selected for the award).
I mention all this because I
think it is relevant to why I became involved with a group of colleagues
assembled by AAHE in a project to explore a new‑version ‑ a subset
really ‑ of the teaching portfolio, "the course portfolio."
Having already had a successful experience with the teaching portfolio, I was
eager to join others in exploring this related form of documentation.
Choosing the Course
I knew from the start the
course I would choose as a focus for my port‑folio. Basic Concepts of
Mathematic (Math 141) was a course that I had developed and introduced into the
curriculum many years before, during my first few years at Temple, any one
that had quickly become a requirement for all math majors. However, for two
antipodal reasons, not all of my departmental colleagues were as convinced as
I was of the importance of this requirement. Some felt the course was superfluous
because students eventually learn the same material when they take other
courses. Others thought that the course was important but that it didn't go far
enough in achieving its goals (to teach students how to thin and write
mathematically; to present topics that reappear often in later courses; to provide
students with an early indicator of whether or not mathematics is really the
field for them). In any case, Basic Concepts of Mathematics was a course that
had become identified with me more than any other in the curriculum, and it
seemed the natural one to choose. As I write in my introductory remarks to the
portfolio,
By preparing this portfolio, l can showcase exactly how 1 think this
course should be taught, what it should cover, what should be emphasized, how
different aspects of the course hang together. This prepares a foundation on
which further discussion and negotiation with my colleagues can be based.
Thinking
About Purposes
As noted above, I undertook the
process of developing my course portfolio as part of a group of colleagues
from around the country. At one of our early meetings, we discussed two
essential questions: What should go into a course portfolio? and Why would a
person want to develop a course portfolio? We decided that the answer to the
former question might well depend on the answer to the latter, and we then
identified three primary reasons that one might want to develop a portfolio:
for use in personnel decisions, as a pedagogical tool, and as an introspective
tool. Each of us agreed to develop our portfolio along one of these lines, but
I decided to keep all three purposes in mind.
Although I already was a
tenured full professor and I had received an award for the quality of my
teaching, I thought that preparing a course portfolio might prove useful for
future personnel decisions. Our collective bargaining agreement with the
university allocates a pool of money annually for merit awards, and merit for
teaching is one category for which those awards are made. I thought that
developing this portfolio might be useful in supporting a case I might make for
such an award. I also was considering applying for a different teaching award
(from the College of Arts and Sciences, rather than from the university as a
whole), and I thought the course portfolio might be helpful for that, as well.
The pedagogical usefulness of
this portfolio is evident in the reasons for which I decided to focus on Basic
Concepts of Mathematics, as noted above. I saw the portfolio as a vehicle
through which I could make a case for why this is an important course ‑possibly
the most important course in our curriculum. It also gave me an opportunity to
present my own thinking about how the course should be taught. I was eager to
do this because I believe that at least part of the criticism from those who
feel that the course does not do enough to prepare students for some of our
more advanced courses can be attributed to the fact that not everyone who
teaches the course (at least 10 different people have taught it in recent
years) emphasizes what I consider to be the appropriate topics or covers
everything that I think the course should cover.
(Now
that I write this, I realize that although my portfolio, in its current
version, usefully presents what I cover when
I teach the course, it needs to say more about why. I mention
this to make the point that a course portfolio is a living document, one that
can be revised or embellished as often as one feels inclined to do so.)
The third reason for developing
a portfolio ‑ its usefulness as a tool for introspection ‑ has
turned out to be the most important one for me. I have had to examine my goals
in teaching this course and the ways in which I hope to accomplish them. In the
process of doing so, I developed a number of new teaching tools and techniques.
Unfortunately, most of the work on my portfolio took place after the fall of
1995. As I did not have an opportunity to teach this course again until the
fall of 1997, I was not able to put some of my new ideas to the immediate test
in this course. However, I was able to experiment with some of them in other
courses. I am pleased by the results and plan to continue using the ideas in
appropriate courses in the future. I will discuss some of these further
below.
Starting With
Reflection
During the fall of 1995, I
taught Basic Concepts and immediately began the process of developing my course
portfolio. My first task was to write a reflective statement in which I discuss
my goals when I teach the course and what I try to accomplish, how I conduct
the class and why, my view of the role of a teacher, my philosophy of homework
and testing, and a number of innovations and experiments I planned to try, especially
to attempt to get the students more actively involved in the learning process.
Writing the reflective statement also provided me with an opportunity to
expand and elaborate on the syllabus I distribute to the class so that students
can know exactly what will be expected of them and so they can acquire in
advance a fuller appreciation of what the course is about.
Sampling
Student Work
Having evaluated some of our in
progress early drafts, my colleagues and I in the AAHE Course Portfolio
Working Group all agreed that a portfolio should include samples of actual
student work. But the question was how much. Since my course is an intensive
writing (IW) offering (that is, it is one of a number of courses at the
university that satisfies a writingacross‑the‑curnculum
requirement), students are required to do a considerable amount of writing.
This includes not only several examinations and a group term paper but also
regular weekly homework assignments and occasional revisions, as well.
As a result, I collect a large
amount of written material from my students. I included much of this in the
student work section of the first draft of my portfolio. I included the actual
student papers with my comments about what was wrong, what was well done,
suggestions for rewriting, etc. (I returned this work to students as it was
corrected throughout the semester, but I collected it again in a student
portfolio at the semester's end.)
When the Working Group met in
the fall of 1996 to exchange draft portfolios, it was generally agreed that
mine was too bulky and that only a sampling of student work should be included.
But how should that sampling be selected? Should it be the best work of the
best student; or should it be selected from the whole spectrum of student
performance? And how large a sample shoal be included? While we never really
reached agreement on the latter issue, we did agree that one approach to this
problem would be to identify a random sample of students at the beginning of
the course and to include their work in the port folio.
The Question
of Quality
During the discussions of the
Working Group, it became clear that one of the issues we would have to address
(at least for portfolios intended for use in personnel decisions) is the
question of quality: Ho,. that is, do our portfolios present evidence of and
allow judgments about teaching effectiveness? Student evaluations, which can be
included in our portfolios, give evidence of what our students think of our
teaching ability and approach, but they don't present evidence of what the students
have learned. Samples of student work, including homework, term papers, and/or
examinations (the kind of things I included in my portfolio) provide more
direct evidence about student learning, but drawing conclusions about the quality
of teaching is nevertheless problematic, especially for readers from outside
the field. For teachers who regularly teach mufti‑section courses,
effectiveness might be assessed through the use of uniform final examinations,
with comparisons of student performance made over a period of several years,
rather than based on a single semester. For those teaching introductory
courses, effectiveness might be measured by tracing student performance in
subsequent courses. But neither of these approaches was practical in my
situation. Instead, I settled on several techniques that I have now incorporated
into all of my other courses; as well. These assessment techniques are
described in detail in my portfolio, but I will simply summarize them here.
1. At the beginning of the semester, I administer a pre‑test
on which I list all the terms and concepts I hope to discuss during the course
of the semester. Using a five‑point scale ranging from "never heard
of it" to "understand it well enough to teach it to someone
else," students are to rate their confidence in their knowledge of each
topic. The same test is then administered at the end of the semester (as a
post‑test), and the results are compared. (Students were assured that
their performance on these "tests" had no bearing whatsoever on their
grades.) A discussion of this comparison is included in the portfolio.
2. After each class, each student is required to prepare an
index card in accordance with a format described in the course syllabus. These
index cards are collected weekly to provide me with a picture of what students
think they are learning or what they think they do not really understand. They
also provide students with an occasional opportunity to display their grasp of
the "big picture" in mathematics. I return these cards to the
students, with my comments and suggestions, and then I Collect them again at
the end of the semester. I included a sample of these cards in the portfolio
because they not only give a picture of what students learned, they also help
illuminate how I teach.
3. At the end of the semester, again in accordance with
specific instructions contained in the course syllabus, students are required
to write a brief (two page) paper summarizing what they feel the course was
about and what they learned. These summaries are included in the portfolio.
4. Students are also required to write a description of
their group experience and an evaluation of the other members of their group,
following a framework of specific questions that I put forth. These, too, now
appear in the portfolio.
These assessment strategies do
not, I'm aware, completely and unambiguously answer all questions about
quality, but they are surely an improvement over the current prevailing
dependence on student satisfaction ratings alone. I feel that my portfolio
gives a much more complete and reliable picture of the effects of the course
on students' learning than I was able to achieve without it.
The Impact of the Portfolio on
Teaching Practice
In addition to motivating me to
adopt some of the assessment techniques discussed above, working on the course
portfolio has led to several other innovations in my teaching. As a result of
having to examine exactly what I would like students to get out of the course,
I have collected a list of terms, theorems, and techniques that I would like
them to know and master. I have turned this list into a study, guide, which I
now distribute to my class. (I have subsequently done the same for other
courses, as well.)
As I mentioned above, because
this is an IW course I have always required a substantial amount of writing on
the part of my students. As a result of my work on the portfolio, I have
rethought my role in helping students develop their writing skills. I have
restructured some assignments and added others. Students now have to rewrite
and resubmit several of their weekly writing assignments. At the end of the
semester, they have to submit a portfolio containing their best and most
improved work, as well as their weekly index cards and several other items. In
addition, each week two students in the class serve as class secretaries. They
write up the notes for the week and submit them to me for comment and
correction. They then have to rewrite them for ultimate distribution to the
class.
Finally, students‑have to
participate in a group project that requires them to write a paper on material
that time constraints have prevented me from covering in class. Samples of this
collaborative student work are contained in my portfolio. Group work is another
area in which my teaching has been developing. While I started experimenting
with group projects even before the AAHE project, I did so with only United
success. Many of the better students resent "wasting their time" when
they feel they would be more efficient and just as successful working on their
own. Groups with primarily weaker students often flounder around, having no
idea where to start or how to continue even if I help them get started.
Nevertheless, I full believe that active learning results u
better understanding and longer retention.
I continued to think about
these issues as I worked on my portfolio, and I decided that what is needed a~
well‑designed "discovery" exercises, which actively involve the
students in discovering new results for themselves and which students can
attack as individuals or in a group, as they see fit. Designing such exercises
is not easy, and none was available when my portfolio was last assembled. This
semester I have develop a few so far, and I will include them in my next
edition of the portfolio.
The Time
Commitment
One of the questions I am asked
me frequently is how long it took me to assemble my course portfolio.
Truthfully, I do not know the answer I would say that I certainly spent in
excess of 50 hours, and maybe ever as many as 100. However, this includes not
only the time I spent writing introductory remarks and n reflective statement
but also the tin I spent expanding the syllabus, developing the study guides,
creating an analyzing pre‑ and post‑tests, developing discovery
exercises, and doing the many rewrites that resulted fro: my evolving sense of
what would make the portfolio (as well as the course) most effective. With one
course portfolio now under my be] think I will be able to complete my second
one (which I plan to do soon) in much less time ‑ maybe as few as 20
hours.
Responses
From Readers
A question of concern common to
many of us developing course portfolios is, How can we make portfolios most
helpful to readers, especially to those who might use them to help make
personnel decisions? Aside from creating a good table of contents and using
separators and color coding and the like, the real question is, What should
the portfolio contain to make it readable and useful to someone who might have
to read many such portfolios? We agreed that the portfolio needed
"narrative glue" to make it readable; that is, it had to tell the
story of the course. But we also wanted to know what sense readers would make
of this story. To answer this question, I selected three people from my
institution who agreed to read my portfolio: my department chair, the chair of
the College Personnel Committee, and the provost. Along with my portfolio (sans
student work), I sent each of them the following set of questions:
i. Does the portfolio provide you with insight into the way I teach
this course? What else would you need to see in order to get such insight?
2. If you were on a search committee or a promotions and tenure committee
or an awards committee, would this portfolio help you judge the quality of my
performance as a teacher? What if your field of interest or expertise had no
relationship to the course in question? If many or all candidates under review
by such a committee were to submit portfolios such as this, would that present
a problem? If so, do you have any suggestions?
3. If you were assigned to teach this course for the first time,
would reading this portfolio be helpful to you?
4. Would a portfolio such as this be useful to make an argument about
the value of a course such as this and/or the way in which it should be taught?
5. What, if anything, could be done to make the portfolio more accessible?
Is there material that should be omitted or additional material that should be
included? Should the portfolio be organized differently? Would a cover sheet
of guidelines for the reader be helpful?
6. With regard to samples of student work, would it have been helpful
to you if I had included some with the material I sent you? Should they be
included with an actual portfolio?
7. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions that would be
helpful?
As of this writing, I have
received only one response ‑ from the provost, who happens to be a mathematician
(and who has since left the institution). In his written feedback to me, he
said that the portfolio reveals much about the course and how I teach it, but
that he was not sure that he had learned enough to form an opinion with regard
to the controversy concerning the place of the course in the curriculum. He suggested
that a clearer statement of the goals of the course and how these goals relate
to the rest of the mathematics curriculum would be helpful.
The provost reports that the
elements of the portfolio that he found most useful were "the extremely
detailed syllabus"; the supplementary exercises and exams, which
"showed the range of mathematics you included in the course, as well as
what a successful student should be able to do at the end of the course";
and the pre‑ and post‑tests together with the results. He added
that with some examples of student work (which I had not included in what I
provided, but do appear in the actual portfolio), the portfolio should "go
a long way towards helping make a good evaluation of the quality of teaching
and the amount of student learning in this course."
Additionally, the provost
suggested that one item about which he would have liked more information was
the question of whether I had experimented with different cooperative learning
techniques, and if so, how well each of these techniques worked. His final remark
was that he was "relieved by the length of [the] portfolio." He said
he had feared that "the volume of paper per portfolio would overwhelm my
capacity to deduce useful information from them." Apparently, this proved
not t be the case (although I can't help wondering whether he would still feel
the same way if 20 people had simultaneously submitted portfolios for 1:
perusal).
Conclusion
As you may surmise from the
opening section of this case study, the history of my involvement with the
course portfolio is closely tied to m3 own personal circumstances and
interests. I do not claim that others would have my experience. Nevertheless,
judging from the case studies of my colleagues whose work is represented here,
I believe that the personal growth and development I experienced is likely to
be shared by any readers of this volume who are willing to devote the time and
effort needed to develop a course portfolio of their own.