Professional Teaching Practice ePortfolio
According to Bauer (2010), the academic ePortfolio is a selection of online, reflective, integrative, and personal documents that present how you have developed as a teacher-scholar in your discipline. ePortfolios showcase artifacts representing your accomplishments related to teaching, research, community-engagement and other service in order to highlight your growth. ePortfolios are constantly evolving, and can be described as a process as much as a product, and need to be modified over time. According to Pat Hutchings from American Association of Higher Education, “A teaching portfolio is a coherent set of materials, including work samples and reflective commentary on them, compiled by a faculty member to inquire into and represent his or her teaching practice as related to student learning and development." Typically, a teaching portfolio is a dossier that includes selected documentation of your teaching effectiveness and your reflection on your teaching.
Why Create an ePortofolio?
Through the process of selecting and organizing material for a portfolio, instructors engage in a reflective process that aids in improving one’s understanding of effective practice.
ePortfolios are a step toward a more public, professional view of teaching as a scholarly activity
Since ePortfolios develop over time and are constantly evolving, they can provide a visual representation of growth as an ongoing process of inquiry, experimentation, and reflection.
Can capture evidence of one’s entire career, in contrast to one particular area
Provide easy access to materials and artifacts that demonstrate your academic activities, achievements and goals (Bauer, 2010).
Page 1 of 6 | Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning | Vancouver Island University Professional Teaching Practice ePortfolio Provide a personal, holistic portrait of an academic as a scholar, teacher, colleague, and citizen (Bauer, 2010).
Serve as a required component of most job applications or tenure/promotion activities
How to Get Started
Start Soon! – it is all about getting started – somewhere. Put a plan into place so you have time each month to work on components and demonstrate your learning. A bi-weekly or monthly time also serves as a focused point of reflection on your practice.
Review other teaching portfolios. Look at the teaching portfolios of friends, colleagues, or advisors. This is a great opportunity to see how others have presented their professional experiences.
Write a statement of teaching philosophy. Articulating your values about teaching helps you choose the best pieces of evidence to support those values. For example, if your teaching philosophy highlights the importance of collaborative learning, find an assignment or project that showcases how you use this approach.
Begin to organize student evaluations. Find and read over past student evaluations. See if you notice any trends. In what areas have you improved and how?
Find sample materials. Review syllabi, assignments, lesson plans, and classroom materials, and choose those which represent your best work. Draft short reflective essays on each of these.
Schedule a classroom observation by a faculty member. Have the faculty member share some thoughts about the observation.
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Steps to Creating an ePortfolio (modified from Elements of a Professional Academic ePortfolio, Bauer, 2010) 1) Collect and save documents that represent your activities, accomplishments and best work in your area. Sometimes these are called “artefacts”.
2) Reflect and think about your growth as a teacher as you look over documents.
3) Select from the collected documents those that are representative of your work as a teacher scholar in your field and that demonstrate competencies such as effective teaching, creativity, collaboration, research, presentation, publication, mentoring, scholarly teaching, etc. Create a reflection on each document that incorporates these components: (based on Gibbs Reflective Cycle, 1988)
DESCRIBE: What happened to create that activity, teach that class, design that lesson?
FEEL: What were you thinking or feeling as you were creating, teaching or designing?
EVALUATE: What was good and bad about that activity, class or lesson?
ANALYZE: What else can you make of the situation? Why did it go well or not so well? Do you think students were experiencing the same thing? What kind of feedback do you have about this activity, class or lesson?
CONCLUDE: What conclusions can you draw? What specific (personal) conclusions do you have?
PLAN: What will you do the next time? What will you do differently, the same? 4) Connect and create cohesion among the various portfolio elements so that the various elements build on each other and support each other. Make the organization clear to your reader so they know the journey, pathway or direction they should take.
5) Collaborate and seek constructive feedback from peers, faculty, administrators, etc. both within your institution and beyond.
6) Locate documents in digital format - maybe on your computer, shared drive, cloud drive or in your learning management system.
Page 3 of 6 | Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning | Vancouver Island University Professional Teaching Practice ePortfolio 7) Build a skeleton framework in a digital website tool (e.g., WordPress, Weebly) to start uploading your content.
Organizing your ePortfolio
Your ePortfolio will need to have headings or sections that help organize your artifacts and reflections. There are endless combinations of headings and subheadings to help structure your ePortfolio. This is where creativity and personalization come into play.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
Documenting Your Teaching Teaching Other Teaching Effectiveness Improvement Teaching Philosophy Student Feedback on Activities to Improve Materials Statement your course (informal and Instruction (new course demonstrating Personal statement formal) dev, faculty student learning describing your goals for Written comments from development activities, (books, papers, next few years students professional learning essays, your sessions, new teaching feedback to Documentation of your Statements from your methods) students etc.) Teaching (course outlines, colleagues about your syllabi, rubrics, artifacts, best qualities Design of new courses Your CV assignments, exams, video) Letters/emails or notes Design of collaborative Bio describing who Examples of assignments, from students courses or teaching you are reading lists, exams, (unsolicited) projects Related research quizzes, handouts, problem Statements from previous Preparation of a new on teaching and sets, descriptions of students teaching method, learning activities you have assessment activity or designed, any photographs Dean or Supervisory grading scheme of items you built for your observations or comments Writing of a textbook or teaching lab manual, courseware Contributions to Teaching Student Learning Demonstrations Scholarly Teaching Profession and/or Your (articles, presentations, Institution (publications, (assignments, activities, product of learning ) teaching conferences, service on teaching workshops, certificates) committees, curriculum Honours, awards or revision for department) recognition of teaching Videos of you teaching in from institution etc. the classroom
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Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education Possible Framework for Portfolio Components Arthur W. Chickering and Zelda F. Gamson | Adopted from the March 1987 AAHE Bulletin 1. Encourage Contact Between Students and Faculty Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of classes is the most important factor in student
motivation and involvement. Faculty concern helps students get through rough times and keep on
Page 5 of 6 | Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning | Vancouver Island University Professional Teaching Practice ePortfolio working. Knowing a few faculty members well enhances students' intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own values and future plans.
2. Develop Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort that a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one's own ideas and responding to others' reactions sharpens thinking and deepens understanding.
3. Encourage Active Learning Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just by sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing pre-packaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.
4. Give Prompt Feedback Knowing what you know and don't know focuses learning. Students need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses. When getting started, students need help in assessing existing knowledge. In classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. At various points during a degree/diploma, and at the end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves.
5. Emphasize Time on Task Time plus energy equals learning. There is no substitute for time on task. Learning to use one's time well is critical for students and professionals alike. Students need help in learning effective time management. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty. How an institution defines time expectations for students, faculty, administrators, and other professional staff can establish the basis of high performance for all.
6. Communicate High Expectations Expect more and you will get more. High expectations are important for everyone - for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well-motivated. Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when teachers and institutions hold high expectations for themselves and make extra efforts.
7. Respect Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning There are many roads to learning. People bring different talents and styles of learning to college. Brilliant students in the seminar room may be all thumbs in the lab or art studio. Students rich in hands-on experience may not do so well with theory. Students need the opportunity to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them. Then they can be pushed to learn in new ways that do not come so easily.
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