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Documenting good teaching
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Education professor Cynthia Weston has seen a trend develop at McGill Her delight is not surprising since the CUTL's mandate, in addition to carrying out research on teaching and learning in higher education, is to help McGill develop policies on teaching and to offer faculty courses and programs to improve their instructional skills. One way that McGill has shown a commitment to enhancing teaching performance is by implementing a policy requiring faculty members to prepare and maintain teaching portfolios "The most important aspect of a teaching portfolio The idea of introducing teaching portfolios was first discussed when William Leggett was vice-principal (academic) and once guidelines for their use and structure had been drafted by the CUTL, they made their way through the various discussion and approval stages fairly smoothly. "I think it happened in the span of an academic year," says Weston. "The process started in September and was policy by May of 1994, which is really pretty fast. I suppose it could have been contentious, but I think that people began to recognize that you can build a dossier on teaching just as you do on research. It's really just another part of our scholarly activity." Can a university policy really go from concept to confirmation without meeting any resistance? Repliess Weston, "There wasn't what I would call resistance exactly, but people did have to think through how to use and adapt the policy. After all, each faculty has a very different culture. In medicine, for example, there is a lot of one-on-one teaching and teaching at the bedside. That's harder to capture. The trick was to make guidelines that were generic without being meaningless." Another problem was that people had to learn to be selective when preparing portfolios, says Weston. "People on some faculties' promotion and tenure committees were receiving dossiers that were just huge." The whole process was overseen by an Academic Policy and Planning subcommittee, of which Weston is a member, devoted to teaching issues. The existence of the committee further sets McGill apart, she says. "This group considers all aspects of teaching. The fact that it is chaired by Vice-Principal (Academic) Bill Chan puts us ahead of the game. I don't think many universities in Canada have this same kind of high-level committee. This is really an important aspect of our institution." Both graduate and undergraduate students are represented on the subcommittee and Weston says their help is invaluable. "They provide great input from the student perspective The subcommittee is currently revising the original 1994 guidelines for creating teaching portfolios. "Once we had been using them for a couple of years, we began to recognize that faculties needed more help. The guidelines weren't really focusing people on the most important part Faculty members are now asked to make the first part of their dossier a teaching statement dealing with the three main areas to be addressed in the portfolio: teaching responsibilities, evidence of teaching effectiveness and teaching development activities. Another change concerns course evaluations by students, which professors are now being asked to summarize and interpret. After that, they are asked to describe the measures they have taken to respond to student feedback. "The thread running through all this is the opportunity that the exercise should provide for reflection on your teaching," says Weston. McGill has been moving toward this emphasis on teaching for a long time, Weston says, noting that the University introduced student evaluations in the mid-80s. "I am really delighted that this has become such a focus at McGill and that having teaching dossiers is policy. I teach workshops on building portfolios and the wonderful thing I've noticed is that it gets brand new staff thinking about the importance of teaching from day one. It also gets them in touch with other people they can talk to about teaching. That starts a dialogue focusing on teaching and that's exactly the kind of outcome we hoped for." Cynthia Weston is giving a teaching portfolio workshop on Friday, December 5, from 1 to 3 pm, in Room 539 of the Education Building. For more information, call the Centre for University Teaching and Learning, 398-6648 or e-mail sarik@education.mcgill.ca DIANA GRIER AYTON
Putting together a portfolioThe proposed new guidelines suggest the following items:
Note: Information in the "optional" sections has been shortened slightly.
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one that she says makes her very happy. The director of the Centre for University Teaching and Learning has watched the importance of good teaching gain the kind of recognition that research has always had.