Folks:

The posting below gives some useful insights on the construction and use of
course portfolios.  It is by Dan Bernstein, director of the Center for
Teaching Excellence and Professor of Psychology at the University of Kansas
and Ellen Wert,  formerly of the Pew Trusts, and now an editor and
educational consultant. Reprinted with permission.


    MAKING VISIBLE THE INTELLECTUAL WORK IN TEACHING

Dan Bernstein and Ellen Wert

No scholar spends months in the library, laboratory, or field and then
discards the information, notes, data, and artifacts collected during those
visits.  The materials represent the scholar's intellectual effort during
that time.  They also are the basis of the books, papers, and articles that
help spread ideas and information, teach others how to be scholars, and make
up the record of the scholar's work that is judged during hiring, promotion,
and tenure.

Yet semester after semester, most college teachers discard the evidence of
the intellectual effort they put into teaching.  The idea of the course,
decisions about texts, assignments, creative solutions to problems that crop
up during the course, innovative plans for next year-the very things that
make sense of the syllabus and notes in the files and dog-eared texts on the
shelf-exist only in the busy teachers' mind.  Teachers design assignments
and then review and evaluate their students' papers, tests, performances,
labs, and projects.  But typically, the only trace of that enormous effort
(the teacher's as well as the students') is the students' final grades.

When all the careful, difficult, intentional, and scholarly work of planning
and teaching a course is undocumented, it is lost for further use.  Not only
is it unavailable for the teacher's own reflection, but it is not there for
aspiring teachers and colleagues to learn from.  It is also unavailable to
those making important decisions about hiring, promotion, and tenure, and to
those mentoring colleagues who are being considered in those processes.

Documentation of the intellectual work involved in teaching-and its
results-should be a critical part of each teacher's professional record.
Student course evaluations and peer observation of classes, although part of
the record, would be much more meaningful and useful in the context of a
nuanced picture of the course.

A practical way to produce this documentation is the "course portfolio," a
written record for each of the teacher's courses that includes

* The teacher's goals for the course
* A plan for achieving the goals
* Assignments and samples of student work that show the depth and breadth of
learning
* Reflection on how effective the course has been and why
* Ideas for making the course better the next time
* Comment from peers on the design of the course and the students'
achievement

A small but increasing number of college teachers are creating and
maintaining "course portfolios."  To be sure, making a course portfolio
requires some planning (asking the students' permission to make copies of
their work, saving copies of syllabi, assignments, notes) and some
diligence.  But most of what goes into a course portfolio is material
produced in the process of planning and teaching a course.  These materials
can be organized into six sections: goals, design, student work, reflection,
plans for improvement, and peer comment.

                Goals

A good course syllabus spells out clearly the teacher's goals for the
learners, along with a basic rationale for how the skills and knowledge they
develop will fit into their larger educational program.  The course
portfolio starts with these statements. For example, a teacher of a
foundational course in visual literacy identifies the skills and
understanding that students will develop as they analyze and create textile
art, photographs, sculptures, or paintings.  A teacher of literary/critical
theory states that students should consider both the assumptions they bring
to the task of analysis and the origins of the theories they use in their
analysis.  A professor of material sciences states that students should be
able to use abstract mathematical representations of systems to solve
practical problems, rather than relying on computational approaches.

                Design

In the syllabus and during the course, the teacher explains the
instructional practices used in the course.  The design section of the
course portfolio includes these explanations plus reflections about the
reasons for choosing them for this particular course and why these
approaches to teaching and learning are likely to produce good outcomes for
the students in the course.

                Student work

Examples of student work provide evidence of the effectiveness of the course
and offer a student voice that can complement the student perspective found
in course ratings.  At the start of each course, instructors can obtain
permission to retain copies of a small sample of student work.  From this,
they can develop an accessible archive that shows clearly what students
understand at the beginning, middle, and end of each course.

For example, to demonstrate the depth of student learning, the visual
literacy instructor displays digital images of student work, commenting on
the qualities of color, line, and form; the instructor also provides the
feedback she gave to her students.  Similarly, the literary/critical theory
instructor offers essays that show how students analyze literature and
question their own cultural assumptions, complete with comments and grades.
The material science professor provides pages of graded examination problems
to demonstrate the range of solutions that students use in solving problems.
In all cases, the teachers display the breadth of student learning by
reporting what percentage of learners achieves at different levels of
quality.  The teacher's vision of what constitutes deep understanding is
thus available for discussion.

                Reflection

Even the reflection section of the portfolio is not completely new work.
Teachers talk frequently with colleagues about the progress of their courses
and consider various reasons for their students' successes and failures.
And most teachers privately ponder their own work before, during, and after
the course.  Taking a moment to make some notes about these conversations
and thoughts is a small investment, especially in comparison with the many
hours already invested in the course.

                Plans for improvement

Again, during and after the course, the teacher thinks about ways to
strengthen the course in the future.  Committing those thoughts to writing
not only helps make those plans reality, but also makes the ideas part of
the record of the course.

                Comments from expert peers

Colleagues with knowledge of teaching practices and expertise in the subject
area can provide valuable written feedback on the quality of the course by
reading the portfolio's first five sections.  The readers' feedback on the
course focuses on central questions about the design and delivery of the
course: the appropriateness of the goals and content of the course, the
adequacy of the instructional design, the depth of understanding expected of
the students, the breadth of achievement across the whole range of learners
in the course, and the teacher's insights and future plans for the course.
Although reading the portfolio and writing feedback takes time, the
colleagues who have done this report that learning about the teaching
practices of others is stimulating and improves their own teaching.

In 1999, faculty and administrators on five campuses began a project to
create and use course portfolios.  Groups of faculty members across a
variety of disciplines from the University of Michigan, Indiana University,
the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Texas A&M University, and Kansas State
University are participating.  Together, they have developed a collection of
examples of course portfolios that both instruct and inspire.  These can be
found at http://www.unl.edu/peerrev/.  (See also at that site information
about a conference on the course portfolio, March 26-28, 2004.)

            What is to be gained through course portfolios?

Quite practically, course portfolios provide an accurate and nuanced record
of the teacher's effort and the results of that effort.  They complete the
picture suggested by grades, student evaluations, and peer observation of
classes.  By documenting their work, teachers have the option to make it
available for meaningful formative and summative evaluation during hiring,
promotion, and tenure.

Also, by preserving the work of teaching, we can then spread effective
practice among faculty members, instructors, and graduate teaching
assistants.  In the same way that advanced students are engaged by reading
research articles, teachers find it fascinating to read accounts of other
teachers' work and samples of student learning.  Providing access to a
sample of course portfolios is a very effective way to promote reflective
practice as a part of the professional life of college teachers.

Moreover, the use of course portfolios can generate ongoing professional
conversations of the sort we have about our disciplinary scholarship.  The
material in the course portfolio is rich and can give substance to our talk
about teaching:

* By presenting examples of student work, teachers shift the focus of
conversation from presentation style to learning and understanding

* In writing and reflecting, each teacher articulates what has been
effective in promoting learning and can use those insights to improve

* By sharing work with peers, teachers are able to get helpful feedback from
colleagues that can strengthen their work

Although building and learning to use course portfolios requires an initial
investment of time and effort, the returns on that investment are valuable.
Course portfolios can help faculty and administrators alike make better use
of time in planning, teaching, and making effective decisions.

What would it take to make course portfolios a regular feature of academic
life? A pioneering group of teachers on each campus can start building and
reviewing course portfolios.  But their efforts will continue only when
faculty, staff, and administrators explore the many ways the course
portfolio can be used.  Equally important, faculty and administrators need
to communicate broadly both the benefits of portfolios and ideas for
improving the model.

                References

Resources on course portfolios
March 26-28, 2004 Peer Review Project Conference:
http://www.unl.edu/peerrev/conference/

Hutchings, P. (Ed.) (1998).  The course portfolio.  Washington, DC:
American Association for Higher Education.

Hutchings, P.  (1996).  Making teaching community property.  Washington, DC:
American Association for Higher Education.

Bernstein, D. (2002).  Representing the intellectual work in teaching
through peer-reviewed course portfolios.  In S. Davis & W. Buskist, (Eds.),
The teaching of psychology:  Essays in honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie and
Charles L. Brewer (215-229).  Mahwah, New Jersey:  Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.

Bernstein, D.J., Jonson, Jessica, & Smith, K.L. (2000).  An examination of
the implementation of peer review of teaching.  New Directions for Teaching
and Learning (no. 83), pp 73-85.

Peer Review Project:  http://www.unl.edu/peerrev/

Contents of a course portfolio (a handy list)
* The teacher's goals for the course
* A plan for achieving the goals
* Assignments and samples of student work that show the depth and breadth of
learning
* Reflection on how effective the course has been, and why
* Ideas for making the course better the next time
* Comments from peers on the design of the course and the students'
achievement