How I did. Finally a collection of data and documents present a record showing how well the faculty member met his or her teaching goals. This “How I did.” section includes a review and interpretation of the results of student survey ratings, any materials from a peer review of teaching materials, alumni letters, teaching awards and classroom assessments of student learning.

Evidence of Effective Teaching

René Descartes, Rutgers University

This section will cover three types of evidence: Evidence from self, evidence from peers, and evidence from students.

The first type of evidence is my classroom materials. The appendix contains full copies of my syllabi for each class, which shows the challenging readings that I schedule and the number of assignments and papers. After that, I have provided a copy of some of the essay prompts and exams that I assign to my students. You will notice that the essays are not easy: they ask students to synthesize a wide variety of materials and write cogently about them. I include a rubric at the end of each assignment so that students know precisely how the papers will be graded. Similarly, the exams are not multiple choice. I expect that engaged students will be able to write short paragraphs in response to difficult prompts. Each exam requires deep thinking and is not simply a matter of regurgitation.

I have also included the abstracts of three papers that I presented on the scholarship of teaching and learning at annual philosophy meetings. These papers detail the improvements shown by my students after I switched to using more active learning in the classroom. I also provided a list of all the symposiums and conferences I have attended or presented at to improve my teaching. I was awarded the University Very Excellent Teacher Award in 2010 and have included a copy of the certificate as well.

The next type of evidence is material from my peers. My classes were peer evaluated in 2012 and 2014, and my teaching materials were evaluated separately in 2016. The reviewers wrote reports about my classes, and I’ve included these letters. I also include my written responses to those reports. You will notice that I take these observations very seriously and have made changes to continuously improve my teaching. When Professor Heidegger said that I was too authoritarian in my response to challenging students in 2012, I changed my approach to engage them in a gentler way. Professor Derrida noted this improvement in his 2014 letter. When Professor Kant said that my teaching materials didn’t include any information about my policy on late assignments, I was sure to make that change, as you can see in my syllabi.

I also have information from students. The first type is my Student Instructional Ratings Survey teaching grid. As it shows, my responses to Question 9 (I rate the teaching effectiveness of the instructor as…) were overall very positive with a mean of 4.15 (where 5 equals “strongly agree”). Most students clearly feel that I am good teacher. However, you will notice that the reviews for Phil 220: Mathematics and Philosophy are not quite as strong. While I am continuously improving this course, it is a highly competitive and difficult class involving mathematics. Many students struggle with this, and you will see that the department average is also lower for other professors who teach this course. In this context, lower scores are understandable. You will also note that my student evaluations show improvement over time. When I began teaching in 2007 my mean score for question 9 was a 3.4. In the last two semesters it has been a 4.2, showing significant growth. In addition to the numerical evidence, I have included a random sample of student comments from my courses, and two letters from student alumni submitted to the chair of my department in support of my teaching.

Finally, I have included three (anonymous) examples of papers that my students wrote in my classes, with my written comments attached. Two of these papers are of extremely high quality. They are nearly publishable work and demonstrate how effective my teaching has been. Even on the lesser quality work, I have very patiently, and using the best practices in paper commenting, provided helpful and detailed advice on how to improve. I used a rubric to show the student exactly what was needed, and I clearly described a few critical places they could improve. You can see the rubric and how it was used to guide the student on the final page of the paper.