Assessing Your Teaching
At the end of a semester, we know it’s tempting to completely disconnect from all that happened in your classes as soon as you submit grades. While we certainly hope everyone has had a chance to recharge, we also hope you’ll set aside some time to assess your teaching before next semester begins.This practice is a crucial piece of your overall development as an educator and can greatly impact your work with the next group of students. Below are some suggestions for reflecting on the past semester: taking stock of where you’ve been with students this semester and using that information to guide your decisions next semester.
Learning From Your Final Assessment
We can’t underscore enough how important assessment is in teaching and learning. It’s the means with which you gather the necessary info you need on student learning and make evidence-based decisions on where to go next. Now, in ending the semester, you have the focal point of your final assessments to provide evidence out of which to base future teaching decisions. And whether you’re teaching the same course or a completely different one, there’s still much to be gained from this kind of reflection. To help your reflection in connection to your final assessments, we offer the following questions:
Three Questions for Reflecting Forward:
1) Did you meet your learning objectives?
You hopefully set out work in your course with some specific overall learning objectives for students. Did students meet them? What evidence do you have in your final assessments? In what areas were they strongest? In what areas did they struggle? In meeting or not meeting your learning objectives, you have some clear areas of focus and further development.
And by connecting back across your objectives and final assessments, you can take stock of what you believe worked well for teaching and learning and what did not.
2) What instructional practices worked best?
Think back to the instructional practices and activities connected to the strongest and weakest areas of your final assessments. Perhaps students struggled most with synthesizing certain elements of your course or analyzing a key text. Or maybe you realized students just weren’t able to adequately back up the claims they made in the final paper as you hoped. What instructional activities did you design in order to support them? By identifying these specific practices and activities, you can begin to address any common patterns or clear areas for future focus.
3) Where do you need to grow next semester?
Answering this final question–in light of the previous two above–can send you into next semester with clear teaching goals and areas for your own development. If you’re teaching the same course again, then we’d suggest you start proactively identifying and adjusting areas of your course you know need to work better. If you’re teaching a completely different course, you can still make sure you’re focusing in on similar learning outcomes and/or areas of instructional practice even if the content isn’t the same. For help, in addition to seeking out the assistance of other instructors in your college, we’d encourage you to take advantage of the digital resources we offer on the #iteachmsu Commons website (iteach.commons.msu.edu), and The Graduate School and MSU Academic Advancement Network workshops. We regularly offer resources and opportunities on our blog, as well as via social media and through in-person workshops. If you aren’t already engaged with us across those spaces, perhaps make that part of your development goals for next semester.