taskforcereport

DRAFT

Report of the Task Force on Teaching

Spring 1999

Chair: Huston Diehl

This report from the Task Force on Teaching was drafted by Huston Diehl, in consultation with Dee Morris and the Executive Committee, and it comes to the department with the recommendation of the Executive Committee that the Department incorporate the changes described in it. The report includes the following: 1) a series of recommendations for changes in the department's procedures for supporting, evaluating, and reviewing English faculty members' teaching; 2) a revised departmental teaching statement; and 3) a copy of the proposed new Course-Instructor Evaluation Form. Additional materials, including responses to the task force's teaching survey and a summary of those responses, a copy of the 1986-87 Teaching Statement currently in effect, and a copy of the current course-instructor evaluation form are available for examination in 308 EPB. The teaching statement incorporates the recommended changes of the task force and is thus very much a working draft; it will, of course, be amended to reflect the decisions of the department, which will be asked to vote on the specific recommendations and to approve a revised statement.

Recommendations

A. Procedure for Mentoring Junior Faculty:

Currently, after the first-year review each untenured faculty member in the English Department is encouraged to ask a tenured faculty member to identify a member of the tenured staff that he or she would like to have serve as a peer reviewer of his or her teaching. Ordinarily, the peer reviewer is chosen sometime during the spring semester of the faculty member's first year, though sometimes a junior faculty member does not approach someone until his/her second or even third year. The peer reviewer's duties are very loosely defined; according to the current teaching statement, the mentor is to be available "for some informal discussions about teaching, some review of course materials, [and] some in-class observations." Typically, the mentor visits the junior faculty member's classes once or twice a year, but there is no formal procedure governing those class visits and no specified number of visits required. In addition, peer reviewers serve as "someone on the tenured staff" who is "able to speak and write knowledgeably about the teaching performance of the untenured member." In recent years, they have usually been asked to write brief reports of their classroom visits, and they have occasionally been asked to give a summary evaluation of the quality of the junior faculty member's teaching during the Assistant Professor review process.

Since the adoption of the policies outlined in the 1986-87 document, "Evaluating Teaching in the Department of English," there has been a gradual evolution of the role and duties of a peer reviewer. Originally, the department made a point of defining the peer reviewer as someone other than "a mentor" and of limiting the length of time he or she served. But the peer reviewer is often viewed as a mentor, and many peer reviewers serve in that role throughout an individual's probationary period. Increasingly, the senior faculty member who served as a junior faculty member's original peer reviewer has been relied upon to provide annual, updated reports on that individual's classroom teaching. Furthermore, there has always been a perceived tension between the dual roles of mentor and evaluator. The Task Force therefore recommends that the procedures for mentoring junior faculty be revised and formalized. Specifically, it recommends the following changes:

1. The mentoring of junior faculty will be divided into two distinct phases. In the initial phase, comprising the first two years of the assistant professor's appointment, the mentor will be responsible for advising and supporting the junior faculty member, but will refrain from making any public report (written or oral) of the faculty member's teaching (that is, the mentor would be encouraged to give the person he or she is mentoring an assessment of how he or she is doing, but, unless the Assistant Professor requests in writing that this assessment be made public, the mentor would be required to keep that assessment confidential). In the second phase, comprising the last four years of the probationary period, the mentor's responsibilities would include formal peer observations as well as mentoring, and the mentor would be expected to submit brief written reports of class observations which will be kept in the Assistant Professor's file for the remainder of the probationary period.

2. The chair, in close consultation with the new faculty member, will assign an initial teaching mentor sometime during the first semester of the Assistant Professor's appointment. Whenever possible, the chair will assign a mentor who the untenured member has identified.

3. After the initial two-year period, Assistant Professors will be given the option of continuing on with their original mentor or choosing a new one. If for any reason--variety, field of specialization, pedagogical philosophy, shared interests--they decide to change mentors, they need only identify a mentor and discuss the arrangement with the chair and the potential mentor.

4. Mentors should observe at least one class per semester. They are also strongly encouraged to invite the person they are mentoring to visit their own classroom. By giving untenured members the opportunity to observe, assess, and respond to the teaching of tenured members of the faculty, reciprocal visitation, the task force believes, alters the dynamic between senior and junior faculty in positive ways, making class visitations less threatening and more natural, eliciting more productive discussions about pedagogy, and reinforcing the notion of "peer" review.

5. Ordinarily, no tenured faculty member will have more than two junior faculty to mentor at any one time. The work of a mentor should be taken into consideration when a faculty member's service is evaluated.

6. A protocol for all classroom observations should be established (see below).

7. Assistant Professors are, of course, welcome to invite faculty members other than their official mentors to visit their classes at any time.

B. Course-Instructor Evaluation Form:

Dissatisfaction with the current Course-Instructor Evaluation Form is widespread. Faculty complain that it is too open-ended and vague, that it encourages students to think of class as entertainment or to see the evaluations as a popularity contest, and that it fails to ask students to reflect upon what they have learned in the course. Nevertheless, most faculty members oppose the use of the university's computerized SPOT forms or other quantitative measures and prefer the use of a form that, like the current one, asks students to respond in writing to open-ended questions.

The Task Force proposes that:

1. the department adopt a new form, which is attached to this report. The proposed form retains some of the features of the earlier form. For instance, it asks students to give written responses to a number of open-ended questions and seeks qualitative rather than quantitative evaluations of the instructor and the course. However, it rephrases and refines the general questions and, following each general question, it adds a series of more specific, optional questions to prompt students to think about various aspects of the course and instruction. It also attempts to focus students more on what they have learned in the course.

2. the course-instructor forms be xeroxed before they are returned to the faculty member and that a complete set of xeroxed copies be stored in the faculty member's file for five years or, in the case of tenured faculty, until the next formal review. To assure legibility of the xeroxed copies, instructors should require students to use pens.

C. Peer Evaluations

In recent years peer review of teaching has received more emphasis in tenure and promotion decisions, and class visits by peers are now mandated by the Provost. In addition, the institution of post-tenure reviews means that the teaching of tenured faculty must also undergo peer review. But the current document governing these peer reviews is very sketchy, and some junior faculty report some dissatisfaction and some confusion about the current procedures. In an effort to clarify and formalize the department's procedures, the Task Force therefore recommends that all faculty members who agree to visit the classroom of a colleague follow the protocol described below.

Class visits should be arranged well ahead of time and should never be unannounced. Before the actual visit, peer reviewers should get a syllabus for the course, find out what the instructor plans to do in the class that will be observed, and ask if there are any particular problems the instructor is encountering with the class or if there is any relevant background about the class the instructor would like to share. Instructors may also want to identify specific issues or concerns they would like the peer reviewer to address.

Peer reviewers should arrive in the class they are observing a few minutes ahead of time and take a seat somewhere in the back of the room. They should make a note of how many students are present and, if the instructor conducts a class discussion, approximately how many students participate. In their observation of the class, they may find it helpful to address the following:

1. the instructor's preparation and goals (how well prepared is the instructor? how has the instructor organized the class period and how effective is that organization? what is the instructor seeking to accomplish during this class period and how successful is he/she? are the instructor's goals appropriate for the level of the course?);

2. the instructor's pedagogical style and rhetoric (how effective, stimulating, and useful is the instructor's mode of lecturing? what kinds of questions is the instructor raising? do these questions stimulate discussion and challenge the students? do they open up the text and address important issues? what kind of a rapport has the instructor established with his/her students, and do the students seem comfortable asking questions, participating in class discussions, engaging the instructor and their fellow students in intellectual discussions, communicating with each other? What kinds of responses does the instructor give to students who answer or ask questions, including responses to student comments that are inappropriate, off the mark, simplistic, or difficult to comprehend as well as those that are insightful and penetrating?);

3. the students' level of engagement and familiarity with the readings, issues, and terminology of the course (how engaged are the students in the material of the class? how well have they mastered the text[s] being discussed? how well versed are they in the literature, culture, theory, history, or issues being discussed? do they make connections with other texts they have read or previous class discussions?).

After the class, the visiting faculty member should arrange to meet with the instructor to review the class, describe what he/she has observed, identify strengths, and make suggestions for improvement. If the instructor being reviewed is untenured and no longer in the initial phase of mentoring, or if he/she is is tenured and undergoing a fifth-year review, the visiting faculty member should then write a brief summary of his observations. One copy of this summary will be placed in the instructor's file, and another copy will be given to the instructor.

D. Teaching portfolios:

To supplement information provided by the course-instructor evaluation forms and peer reviews and to help evaluate the full range of an individual's teaching, the task force proposes that the department maintain faculty teaching portfolios. The purpose of the teaching portfolio is to maintain a "thick description" of each faculty member's teaching and thus to provide a record that can be consulted at salary time, during faculty reviews, and for departmental and university teaching awards. Faculty members would be asked to update their portfolios each spring, in preparation for the annual salary review.

Each portfolio would include the following materials:

1) a teaching cv, which lists: all the courses the faculty member has taught at Iowa, along with the semester and year in which they were taught and their enrollment; the names of students whose dissertations and M.A., M.F.A., and honors theses the faculty member has directed, along with any awards or book publications resulting from this work and a note on what position the graduate student had taken after completing the degree; the names of students on whose dissertation, comprehensive, M.A., M.F.A., and honors committees the faculty has served; and any teaching awards or teaching grants and fellowships the faculty member has received;

2) a personal statement on teaching;

3) syllabi and other course materials for courses taught in the preceding 5 years;

4) copies of course-instructor evaluations for those courses and, for untenured faculty and tenured faculty undergoing a fifth-year review, summaries of these evaluations on a cover sheet;

5) other relevant material that the instructor wishes to include (e.g., essays on teaching or

pedagogy).

E. Departmental Review of Teaching

The Task Force does not recommend any changes in the departmental policy on the review of the teaching of untenured faculty. However, it does recommend updating the department's procedures for the review of the teaching of tenured faculty.

Currently the departmental policy for reviews of teaching of tenured faculty reads:

"The teaching section would list courses taught in the previous seven years with, if appropriate, a brief commentary on the focus of individual course and/or new materials and approaches which informed these courses. When one's scholarly work has had a direct effect on teaching, or vice versa, this might be noted. Reviewees should also note work with graduate students which doesn't show up in the listing of courses (such as readings courses, comprehensive exam supervision, membership on dissertation committees, and the like) and should list the dissertation committees he or she chaired; if a dissertation were subsequently published, that could be noted, as well as a note on what position the dissertation writer had taken after completing the degree.

"...the reviewee would also provide complete sets of student evaluations, with syllabi and/or course descriptions, from five courses taught in the previous seven years. The distribution of these courses between undergraduate and graduate levels should reflected the balance of the reviewee's teaching assignments during the period of review. The reviewee might also wish to include other relevant material from one or more of these courses, including, for example, statements from those with whom the reviewee has team- taught and/or statements from those with whom the reviewee has team-taught and/or statements from peer reviewers."

The Task Force recommends that this procedure be revised in the following ways:

1. Mandated, fifth-year, post-tenure reviews, which are written for the Dean and shared with the faculty member being reviewed, will be conducted by a committee of four, consisting of the Chair, the Associate Chair of Faculty, and two members of the tenured faculty, to be chosen by the chair as a regular committee assignment;

2. The statement of departmental procedures should describe the college's distinction between the standard review;

3. In a standard review of the teaching of a tenured faculty member, two class visits will be scheduled. Where possible, one of these will be in a graduate course, the other in an undergraduate one;

4. If in an extended review, teaching needs to be emphasized, the process might be more extensive, and would involve additional class visitations, a review of commentary on papers, etc. Should significant problems with teaching be identified, the review committee will suggest a follow-up procedure and, if necessary, active intervention;

5. For both types of reviews, faculty members will be asked to update their teaching portfolios and also to select representative samples of course materials (one undergraduate and one graduate class) from their portfolios for the review committees to assess.

F. Additional recommendations to foster a culture of teaching

The Task Force also recommends that the department:

1. Establish a voluntary syllabus bank on the departmental website. Faculty members will be encouraged to submit the syllabi and other course materials for each course they teach and to update earlier submissions. By establishing and maintaining a syllabus bank, the department hopes to provide exemplary models for new teachers or for faculty members teaching a particular course for the first time; enable faculty members to learn more about what their colleagues are doing in the classroom; stimulate discussion about diverse pedagogical approaches and strategies; and encourage exchange and collaboration among faculty teaching the same course. This syllabus bank will be made available only to English faculty.

2. Engage the Associate Chair of Graduate Studies, the Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies, the Director of the Honors Program, and John Brogan in exploring how to use departmental webpage to enhance the department's teaching mission. Questions they might consider include: How can we use the website to represent our teaching to the public (we might, for instance, make video clips of teachers in action)? how might we use the web pages to encourage discussion about our teaching (someone, for instance, could be given the responsibility each month of posing a question or defining an issue--e.g., grading and evaluation, introductory courses, writing assignments, plagiarism, range of student abilities)? How might we include our T.A.s in general education and rhetoric to support a broader culture of teaching?

3. Encourage team teaching. Although enrollment pressures make it difficult to staff team-taught courses, the Task Force believes that team teaching provides an excellent opportunity for faculty members to develop their teaching skills, to learn from one another, and to experiment with new courses and pedagogies. When instructors in English collaborate with faculty from other departments, team teaching also provides them and their students the opportunity to engage in valuable interdisciplinary work that has the potential to challenge conventional ways of thinking and forge new modes of inquiry. The Task Force encourages faculty, in close consultation with the Area Committees, to propose team-taught courses, and it urges the Curriculum Committee to consider ways in which a limited number of team-taught courses might be offered each semester even under the pressures of heavy undergraduate enrollments.

4. Sponsor a yearly teaching colloquia, organized around a different set of issues each year, to stimulate a departmental-wide conversation about teaching.

5. Support a competitive summer grant with departmental endowment funds to encourage the development of new courses, team-teaching, experimentation with the computer classroom, and other creative teaching ideas.

F. Recommendations for further study:

1. Although the standard teaching assignment in the department is two courses per semester, some faculty routinely teach a large number of courses with high student enrollments, while a few teach a disproportionate number of low enrollment courses in literature. The Task Force believes that the department needs to attend to the equity of student enrollments over a 3-4 year period in an effort to distribute students, as much as possible, equitably among faculty members. It might need to create a policy governing the rotation of graduate, honors, and other small classes.

In addition, some faculty carry much higher numbers of graduate advisees and/or serve on a disproportionate number of comprehensive and dissertation committees. The Task Force recommends that the department consider how to account for unusually heavy teaching loads in salary reviews or, perhaps, in making committee assignments. To do so, the Department will need to agree on some kind of bookkeeping, and to come to some kind of understanding among faculty about such issues as how to factor in people with large classes who have T.A.'s.

2. Study the types of courses the department offers in an effort to assure a variety of classes are being offered every semester.

3. Review the reporting of statistics on class enrollments, especially in cross-listed courses: what department gets the credit for students enrolled in cross-listed courses?

4. Assess the potential of websites to enhance teaching, including a consideration of the pros and cons of web usage in class and the ways course websites might be featured on the department's pages

5. Work on shifting professorial faculty toward earlier parts of the curriculum (e.g., general education courses, introductory lectures, readings courses, and service assignments on general education committees).

The aim of this shift would be to assure that there is a cross fertilization between the lower and upper parts of the curriculum.