Mid-semester course evaluations are a valuable resource for improving student learning, enhancing teaching effectiveness, and fostering a positive classroom learning environment. Unlike course evaluations completed at the end of the semester, feedback from students obtained at one or more times during the semester can lead to significant learning and teaching changes for both students and instructors while the course is still in progress.
Teaching Tips
Articles and resources to empower your teaching experience.
Classroom Observation and Formative Peer Review of Teaching
“Formative peer review of teaching is focused on the long-term enhancement of teaching and learning. Even when mandatory, the process should be primarily driven and guided by the faculty member’s personal goals, by feedback from students and/or colleagues, and/or by a desire to address problems in a specific course or academic context” (Smith, 2014).
Faculty development scholarship has addressed the different purposes, procedures, and responsibilities that distinguish formative from summative evaluation of teaching.
Mentoring
Chairs Frank Hassebrock (2015 Director, Center for Learning and Teaching) and Susan Garcia (Associate Provost) led a workshop on February 18, 2015 on Building An Effective Mentoring Network.
Early Career Faculty Learning Community
This learning community addresses the goals and interests of early-career faculty (second-year through the tenure-review year) as they continue to develop, practice, and evaluate their teaching methods and skills.
Classroom Teaching Observations
Individual faculty (non-tenured or tenured) may request that the director of the Center for Learning and Teaching observe one or more classroom meetings, followed by discussion and feedback.
Conversations and Consultations
The Center for Learning and Teaching is available for one-on-one conversations or consultations with individual faculty members at all stages of professional development and experience.
Teaching – 3 Tips for the Minutes Before Class
Waiting for the students to arrive, whether in person or remotely, this short video from the Chronicle provides three practical tips to make the most of that time.
Teaching – Student and Peer Evaluation of Teaching
Our reading group gathered to discuss "Student and peer evaluation of teaching"
Teaching – Student Workload Conundrum
Students say they are doing more work than ever. Faculty say they are lessening breadth and focussing on just the key ideas of the course. How can we have these two seemingly opposing ideas?
In this week’s deep dive, I look into the Chronicle article, Students Say Their Workload Increased During the Pandemic. Has It?
Teaching – Combat Linguistic Prejudice in Your Class
This recent piece from the Chronicle, How professors can and should combat linguistic prejudice in their classes, gives ten tips on making sure our grading and expectations do not privilege one group of students over another. Kaly Thayer, our Coordinator for Multilingual Learning, takes a deep dive into several points in this article and how it relates to our Denison students.