Basic Teaching Portfolio Structure

A basic teaching portfolio addresses three main questions:

1. What are your teaching responsibilities?

This section is typically a narrative containing a brief explanation of the faculty member’s teaching responsibilities. In essence, it describes “what I did,” with supportive narrative as to the content, level, size, special circumstances, or other relevant details about the courses. For example, the faculty member would list courses taught by title, the term it was taught, the number of students enrolled, whether a lecture or a seminar, etc. Also, any independent study courses, honors courses, or dissertation mentoring would be included here.

2. What are your teaching goals and philosophy?

In this section, the faculty member states his or her philosophy and goals for teaching. The focus of this “Why I did it” section faces questions like:

• Given my responsibilities, what goals did I attempt to reach through my teaching?
• Why did I choose to teach in the manner I used?
• What was I trying to achieve as a teacher?
• What did I expect my students to gain from my course: mastery of content, critical thinking skills, etc?

For example, an instructor may state that he or she wants students to develop critical thinking skills. Then the instructor explains that this goal led to a different style of teaching beyond the content-based lecture to include cooperative learning activities and out of class research assignments.

3. How do you know you were effective?

The section contains a narrative explanation of the data and documents 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.

As in the example above, if an instructor states as a goal that students should develop critical thinking skills, then evidence to show how this goal has been accomplished should be presented, e.g., results from exams, assignments, and classroom assessments that show progress towards critical thinking skills, results from students’ evaluations, etc.