Electronic Teaching Portfolios

Why a Teaching Portfolio

As someone just beginning to prepare for the job market, I cannot stress enough the importance of documenting the sophistication and effectiveness of your teaching. This is especially true since Purdue has a reputation for developing scholar teachers--this can be a major strength for any candidate on the job market. Today's workshop aims to get you started on creating an expandible teaching portfolio to help you document your teaching.

What's a Teaching Portfolio

Rob's Powerpoint is attached below.

Generally, a teaching portfolio contains the following:

• Collection of courses taught. This can include syllabi, assignment sheets, sample student projects, and a cover letter discussing course goals or specifics on your teaching.
• Statement of Teaching Philosophy: I know many of you will be working on these with your mentors, but this is the why, what, and how of your teaching
• Documentation of effectiveness: this can include teaching observation letters, summary / presentation of student evaluations, student testamonials, teaching and professional development awards. Even though you don't have these materials yet, you should think about how you would include them into a teaching portfolio

Check the sample table of content pages compiled at OSU.

Sample Portfolios at Purdue

• William Peck (Creative presentation)
• Alexis E. Ramsey (integrated into professional site)
• Nathaniel Rivers (great observation approach)
• Kristen Seas (comprehensive reflections)
• Marc C. Santos (detailed course information, professional site)
• Amy Ferdidandt Stolley (nice one page layout)
• Karl Stolley (Design style reflections, use of images)
• Jeremy Tirrell

IC@P Portfolio Awards

ICAP holds a yearly competition for teaching portfolios. Be on the look out for an email from Kristine Johnson in the fall.

Working Santos' Template

• Create a folder called "portfolio" in your www folder. Copy the files from the CD into this folder
• Open Macromedia Dreamweaver and open the five files
• Make sure you use the code view. Also, learn to preview your pages in a browser (in other words, try not to rely on Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG). In Dreamweaver, we will:
  1. Change the title field
  2. Change the main headings
  3. Insert a link (move syllabus PDF into folder and create link on Course page
  4. Copy in some text from Microsoft Word
• Finally, Santos will help you link a CSS page and provide links to some tutorials. He's especially proud of his Guide to Web Standards Design of a Professional Web Presence.

References

• Ohio State University Office of Faculty and TA Development--very good for course portfolios
• Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness--good resources for beginning to write your teaching philosophy and sample teaching statements by faculty in several disciplines.