A booklet in 6 volume
Volume 1 -Clear Goals
(Modeled upon 6 sequences of scholarship identified in Scholarship
Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate by Charles E. Glassick, Mary Taylor
Huber, & Gene I. Maeroff. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.)
This electronic version of the booklet may not contain all the articles in
the printed format. Please contact the CTL at (270) 745-6509 for more
information.
Developing teaching skills is a process, one that can engage a person for an entire career. The standards proposed by Dr. Glassick and others suggest a route we can follow to sustain quality in our teaching outcomes.
Each booklet will contain a worksheet at the end to help you apply the content.
Our booklets may serve as starting points for thought and elaboration. We hope you will prepare a folder for the entire collection. The folder could also serve as a place to record your reflections on teaching and other useful materials in anticipation of the final booklet, Reflective Critique.
We hope you will share with us your reflections or examples for each of the topics. We will offer updates to each topic as we receive sufficient material.
Sally Kuhlenschmidt,
Center for Teaching and Learning
*** “All works of scholarship, be they discovery, integration, application,
or teaching, involve a common sequence of unfolding stages. We have
found that when people praise a work of scholarship, they usually mean that
the project in question shows that it has been guided by these qualitative
standards:
1. Clear goals
2. Adequate preparation
3. Appropriate methods
4. Significant results
5. Effective presentation
6. Reflective critique”
Glassick, Charles E.; Huber, Mary Taylor; & Maeroff, Gene I. Scholarship
Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1997.
Back to Table of Contents
by Barbara Kacer, Teacher Education
Since the words "goal" and "objective" both refer to learning outcomes, the words are often used synonymously. However, the words imply distinctly different kinds of outcomes. Goals are statements that describe purposes/broad outcomes of learning [e.g., The student will develop computer literacy.] Objectives are specific statements of what students will learn to do [e.g., Given a quadratic equation, the student will be able to determine its two roots.]. Objectives serve to focus instruction and determine how students shall be assessed.
Regardless of whether objectives measure intellectual skills (cognitive objectives), attitudes (affective objectives), or physical abilities (psychomotor objectives), they should be written in behavioral terms. No doubt the rationale for this is obvious for psychomotor domain. How would one know that a person could dribble a basketball unless that person was observed dribbling a basketball? The reason for writing cognitive and affective objectives in behavioral (observable) terms is less obvious because knowledge and attitude are internal processes. However, people manifest their knowledge and attitude in observable ways [e.g., by verbally or textually explaining something, by volunteering to help built a Habitat house]. Likewise students also manifest their knowledge and attitude in observable ways and teachers can use these observations in a variety of ways: as the basis for grading, as "fodder" for parent-teacher conferences, as the basis for scholarship recommendations.
In the interest of fairness, students need to be informed of course
objectives and expectations, teachers need to teach the course objectives,
and students need to be held accountable for those objectives that were addressed
in a course. Scoring guides (rubrics) are used to assess performance
outcomes that are not appropriately measured with standard objective test
items [e.g., skill at dribbling a basketball, quality of products].
How to assess the objectives you have written:
• Is the performance specified? [Given a video of a tennis match,
the students will rate the match in terms of the tennis tactics and skills
outlined in class.]
• Is the performance stated in observable terms? [will rate the match in terms of ...]
• Is the condition specified? [given a video of a tennis match]
Sources used:
Write Better Behavioral Objectives; published by the American Society
for Training and Devel-
opment; Info-line Issue 8505; May 1985.
Middle and Secondary School Instructional Methods, 2nd ed., Kenneth D. Moore; McGraw- Hill; 1999.
For further examples of course objectives, visit: http://www.wku.edu/teachingcgoals.htm
Back to Table of Contents
Three questions* to
ask
about all types of scholarly work
And ideas for answering them
by Sally Kuhlenschmidt
*Glassick, Charles E.; Huber, Mary Taylor; & Maeroff, Gene I. Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997
1. Does the scholar state the basic purposes of his or her work clearly?*
A. The teacher may begin each class with a statement of objectives for the day. Using a few minutes at the beginning of class to clearly inform students about the aim of the learning session and can help direct student attention to that which is most important. Learners typically have difficulty separating the forest from the trees. Instructor guidance, even simply writing an objective on the board, can be helpful. Making objectives explicit can also help the instructor be realistic and focused during that precious time in contact with the student. An explicit statement of objectives for each assignment can enhance motivation and the quality of work. Clarity in objectives is a skill that comes with practice. (See page 6 for further guidance.)
B. The teacher may list in the syllabus the goals for the course. Identifying the focus for a course helps encourage all participants to work toward the same goals. There will never be sufficient time to cover all the material and do all the activities that the teacher may desire. Insufficient time means that choices must be made in terms of what to include and what to exclude. A set of goals helps in making those choices. Goals can also be of use in selecting course activities. If a goal is to encourage skill in applications, then course assignments ought to be applied activities. If critical thinking is a goal, then typically some type of written reflection or group discussion will help achieve the critical thinking. Another application of this standard is to have students set their personal learning goals for the course, something beyond a mere “getting an A,” something more specific than “do the best I can.”
C. The teacher may record a set of teaching improvement goals or objectives for the coming year. In the information age there are many demands for our time and attention. Unless we are focused in our objectives, we run the risk of scattering our time in less important yet seemingly urgent demands. Targeting a personal set of skills to build in the coming year can help teachers use their energies wisely, just as course objectives help students focus. The challenge is making them reasonable so that they do not become just another set of broken New Year’s resolution.
D. The teacher may also prepare a 3-5 year plan for teaching enhancement. Perspective is what helps people to achieve happiness. To put our efforts into perspective is to take the long view, to build something worthwhile that cannot be done in a single year. To not plan over time is to be condemned to living the same life in the classroom over and over. While that may satisfy some for a time, it will not satisfy a scholar because the scholar knows that only change is permanent. Those who are merely repeating what they have done before as teachers are not adapting to the changing student population, new information about effective teaching skills, or the changing information media.
E. The teacher may incorporate university or departmental goals. Although a university is by design a place of diversity, it and the underlying departments do have particular societal missions to be accomplished. Faculty often work very independently, but we are a part of a group trying to accomplish something together that we could not accomplish separately.
2. Does the scholar define objectives that are realistic and achievable?*
This question applies to both the objectives defined for the student and the course and those defined for oneself. What is a realistic and achievable goal? The answer begins by understanding your target population. That which is realistic and achievable for an Honors or graduate student, or oneself (a common implicit standard we use) may not be for Western’s typical freshman.
A goal may vary in difficulty level, but it may also vary in focus. An older adult student may place more value and effort in a task integrating a lifetime of personal experiences. An 18 year old may need activities that help to explore identity or career choices or may need to work with peers to combine bits of experiences and knowledge.
Although a person may begin with a grand vision (e.g., become the best-beloved teacher all my students have ever had), success typically comes from focusing energies on something specific and observable (e.g., have a half-hour meeting with every student every term, prepare transparencies that conform to all the standards for effectiveness).
High goals tend to result in increased achievement in the classroom and elsewhere. But the steps to achieve those goals need to be of manageable size or they won’t be taken. Doing a little bit can help the student and the teacher. Breaking a major class project into sub-pieces and requiring smaller bits at more frequent intervals can teach the student effective project management skills and make the grading more manageable. Students also get an opportunity to improve on later pieces. Breaking a large teaching development task (e.g., learning a new teaching technology) into smaller bits can make it more accessible.
Knowing what is realistic and achievable is not easy in advance.
It is often a matter of guesses. Self-reflection, however, can
help to make those guesses educated. Reviewing your personal goal-setting
process and whether the outcomes were achieved can tell you if the size and
clarity of your sub-goals were effective or ineffective. If you aren’t
seeing progress, reduce the size of the step.
3. Does the scholar identify important questions in the field?*
Planning and goal-setting are worthless if the questions you explore in the classroom or in your personal teaching development are not the important ones. One science instructor of my acquaintance asks himself, “What is the single core issue in this field?” and then structures the entire course around exploring that single issue. Similarly in terms of personal teaching goals, knowing what your teaching philosophy is, what is most important to accomplish in working with students, should help direct your time spent on teaching enhancement. If you must respond “so what?” to any of your actions, then it is time to rethink those actions. In an age where everyone is pressed for time, knowing what is important helps to maintain balance and perspective. That which is important does change over time and with experience. That is the nature of the teaching process. It demands we reflect on our teaching or drift out of sync with our students and ourselves and perhaps our program and school.
Instructor Goals and the Student Input to Teaching Evaluation (SITE)
(See the CTL booklet on student evaluations at: http://www.wku.edu/teachingbooklets/site.htm)
The student ratings of a course may be positively influenced if the instructor has well-defined and posted course goals. Consideration of the following ideas may help instructors enhance their teaching and affect student responses on the Student Imput to Teaching Evaluation (SITE).
Item 1: My instructor displays a clear understanding
of course topics.
Item 3: My instructor is well-prepared for class.
In the Information Age it is impossible to cover all desirable content.
Decide in advance what is the most critical material deserving most of your
and your students’ time and effort. Also, decide what is secondary
and can be omitted as necessary. Planning what to emphasize can make
course preparation easier, better convey content, and help students
focus their efforts. How can students hear your message if you are not clear
about it yourself?
Item 2: My instructor displays interest in teaching
this class.
If you establish personally meaningful goals for the course and
the material, you will likely be more interested in teaching the course material.
If you do not identify what is important, students will realize and won’t
be interested.
Item 4: Performance measures are well-constructed.
Understanding course goals or objectives is critical in deciding how
to measure student performance. There are many tools for assessing learning
(e.g., essay exams, group projects, papers). Before you can construct or select
a performance measure, you need to understand what the measure is supposed
to do in terms of the course objectives or goals. Some measures are
more appropriate for particular objectives. For example, an essay exam may
tap creativity more effectively than does a multiple choice exam.
Without clear goals, student performance measures
1) may be unduly weighted
on minor material,
2) may reflect instructor
biases that are trivial in terms of the discipline, or
3) may be irrelevant
for student learning.
Item 5: My instructor is actively helpful.
Item 6: Overall, my instructor is effective.
Knowing your goals allows you to allocate your time more effectively
for yourself and your students. Better priority management through goal
setting means you are spending time on the things that are important.
Across campus I have heard faculty talk about how time with students is important
and one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching. Have you made time
with students an explicit goal of your course and of how you spend your
course and office time? Sometimes people have difficulty setting goals because
it means acknowledging that some tasks cannot or will not be met.
Not setting goals, however, means that you will allow activities to simply
be lost, without consideration of whether that is good or desirable for you
and your students.
Optional additional SITE items. Instructor goals should
guide teacher selection of the additional items for students to rate. This
might seem obvious, but I have seen instructors fail to consider the relation
between what the course was designed to do and the evaluation questions for
the course. For example, if the instructor is interested in improving
critical thinking, then select items from the cafeteria that reflect this
target. The results will be more meaningful and useful if items are
chosen based on the goals around which you structured your course. If
results are not satisfactory, reconsider course design issues. For example,
perhaps exam questions, course assignments or daily activities do not actually
encourage critical thinking.
Improved goal setting by itself may not change SITE
results, but failing to do an effective job of goal setting may well prevent
improvement. Teaching is complex, but it is a skill that can be improved
with time and patience. Knowing what you hope to achieve in the classroom
is a prerequisite for achieving it.
Interpreting SITE and other teaching information
about goals. When interpreting teaching evaluation information, such as the
SITE or course syllabi, study the information in light of the overall objectives
of the course. The relevant questions to ask will vary depending on
who is interpreting the information (instructor, department head) and for
what purpose (personal development or university evaluation).
Some considerations include:
Recently, I flew to Denver for a conference on teaching writing in college. The person in the next seat asked what sort of job I had, and when I explained that I taught college English, the reaction was, “Oh, I’d better watch how I talk.” Although English professors do not hear exactly these reactions from colleagues in other departments across campus, we do hear another sort of critical comment: “Why aren’t you teaching our students how to write?”
This misperception, that the English department isn’t teaching writing, stems from an unrealistic and unfounded assumption that after they have completed the two required composition courses, students will be able to write fluently and competently in every other discipline. The required composition courses are usually taught by English teachers, whose disciplinary discourse has its own unique patterns with a structure of citation based on MLA style. Most English professors have little or no working knowledge of the structure or patterns of discourse in other disciplines.
Writing and the teaching of writing should be integrated into all areas of the curriculum. Writing across the curriculum means that all teachers share the responsibility for the improvement of student writing. The assumption of this responsibility may require faculty to rethink their beliefs about the place of writing in the classes that they teach. Each discipline has its own discursive practices; to enter into the conversation of that discourse, students must learn the language, the content and the structures of a particular written discourse by writing. The teaching and modeling of the instructor supports students in their learning efforts. Writing across the curriculum (WAC) aims to support teachers and students in their teaching and learning through its primary goals: writing for learning; writing for communication; writing for assessment.
As they use writing to learn, students make connections between prior knowledge and new knowledge in more informal writing situations, and teachers use a variety of writing tasks during classes. They might ask students to write microthemes, take notes, paraphrase or summarize reading assignments or daily lectures. With learning logs and reading response journals, students have the opportunity to think on paper about questions that come up during their reading. This writing aids both those taking part in the interview and those writing the analysis
Writing as communication requires the course instructor to provide adequate support and modeling of writing behaviors in writing-intensive courses so that students have the opportunity to practice the format, vocabulary and method of citation of that discipline. As one example, students in science laboratory classes need to learn to use the proper format for lab notebooks; students could respond to one another’s writing in their peer groups, and as one task, students might edit their partner’s notebooks for proper format and documentation. Faculty in science classes might also spend some time discussing examples of reports and how they are written. Rather than grade the surface features of such lab reports (mechanics and usage), teachers could comment on how the students composed the reports and on the appropriateness of the style to the assignment and to the discourse of the discipline. In a second example, one professor of business administration describes how his students use simulated interviews which their fellow students, the audience, then analyze in a written format. He comments that by the end of the course, students have improved both their writing and their oral speaking skills (Thaiss 51).
Writing as assessment is still possible and useful in writing-intensive courses. Teachers may find, however, that they need to review with students how to read test questions, so that the students can be as successful as possible in their test-taking. Students should be able to show that they have been able to use writing, first for learning, then as a means of communicating what they have learned. In these circumstances, writing will certainly serve both students and teachers as a mode of learning rather than as a mere means of assessment. While all of us, students and teachers, understand that writing is a necessary skill, a strong writing across the curriculum program will demonstrate to all of us that “language, learning and teaching are inextricably linked” (Russell 19) .
Works Cited:
Thaiss, Chris. “The Virginia Consortium of Faculty Writing Programs: A Variety of Practices.” Teaching Writing in All Disciplines. Ed. C. Williams Griffin. California: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1986.
Russell, David R. “American Origins of Writing Across the Curriculum.” Landmark Essays on Writing Across the Curriculum. Ed. Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 1994. 3-22.
Allan Heaps, Center for Instructional Technology
Power in the Classroom.
Goals for the use of technology instruction should be classroom-centered.
Decide what you want to accomplish in the class first, then insert the technology
where it will enhance those goals. The only way that the use of technology
can be defended is when it is shaped by course goals.
Technology can be a very violent act. In a student-teacher relationship
the power rests primarily with the teacher. When that power gets wrapped
up with the power of technology you have a degree of control that can be used
to enforce and destroy or to teach and build. Instructors need to be very
careful about using technology for technology's sake. Students know
when technology without purpose is being imposed on them. They know
it is about power and not about learning.
Power in Your Own Technology Development.
When learning technology, be realistic in the goals you set. Technological
literacy is a process. Find out where your skills lie currently and where
you want to go next. Don't try to learn everything at once but focus
on a concept at a time. The steps you take should be guided by
concrete tasks. Don't just say "I want to learn Netscape Navigator"
but instead say, "I want to learn how to find information on the Web." Then
research that task, or learn the pertinent software program(s). Having a specific
task helps you learn more efficiently and recall the information more effectively.
Technological literacy needs to be approached in the same way that we
ask students to develop critical literacy skills. When dealing with
computer technology, you don't need to learn the menus but the principle or
concepts behind the menus. You need to know the general principle or
concept that is important or useful, then let the interface of a particular
program guide you to the closest term. If you don't know the function
then the words won't make any sense. For example, knowing that copying
and pasting information is possible allows you to look for that capacity across
a variety of programs, regardless of how it is accomplished in each specific
program.
Understanding principles or concepts allows you to transfer your knowledge
across a
variety of circumstances. Keeping the larger picture in mind allows
you to be flexible and adaptable, not trapped into needing a specific software
program.
Knowing your objectives also helps you to allocate your time and resources
more effectively.
Technology can be an asset to creating clear teaching goals.
A variety of softwares exist that may expedite and
simplify keeping track of where you are and where you are going. For
example:
Lotus Organizer may help in your goal-setting
process (You can set up cues to remind you to stay on track with regard to
time). Lotus Organizer is available through WKU On-line.
In the same vein, you may post objectives and target
audience on-line for the course (webpage, bulletin board, etc.) so that students
can keep themselves on time and in line with course objectives.
The following Websites have more information on goal-setting or objectives:
This is a straightforward exposition of Bloom’s taxonomy.
http://faculty.washington.edu/~krumme/guides/bloom.html
URLs for Teaching Goals Inventories
A series of 52 questions on course goals (about 15 minutes to complete):
http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/cats/tchgoals.html
Another TGI (Self-Scorable Version)
http://www.umr.edu/~assess/tgi/tgi.html
Course Planning Worksheet
Course Name: _________________________________________
Describe target audience; who are your typical students?
Describe the primary quality (qualities) you want students to have, keep,
or display when they leave this course (1 sentence).
Most Important
Moments in Course when you
Course Goals:
actually teach to these goals:
1.
2.
3.
Possible Methods/Activities/Assignments fulfilling the goals:
Goal 1
Goal 2
Goal 3
Share your goals with us.
| Making goals explicit helps encourage progress toward them. Write your goals on this page, place in an envelope addressed to you, then place that inside an envelope addressed to us. If you tape the internal envelope shut or seal it, we won’t look. In a few months, we’ll send your copy back to you so you can judge if you’ve achieved your goals. |
| If you want comments or feedback, insert a note asking for it and we’ll be happy to discuss your course goals with you. |
My teaching vision (1 sentence).
My four year teaching goals. In four years what do you hope to have accomplished with regard to building your teaching skills (e.g., facilitating group process, content knowledge, new methods, course design, use of technology).
1.
2.
3.
My personal objectives for the first year. (These should build toward the four year goals.)
1.
2.
3.
Share your goals with us.
| Making goals explicit helps encourage progress toward them. Write your goals on this page, place in an envelope addressed to you, then place that inside an envelope addressed to us. If you tape the internal envelope shut or seal it, we won’t look. In a few months, we’ll send your copy back to you so you can judge if you’ve achieved your goals. |
| If you want comments or feedback, insert a note asking for it and we’ll be happy to discuss your course goals with you. |
Volume 2 --Adequate
Preparation
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to this Booklet Index
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