Reflecting on Your Teaching

Reflecting on your teaching makes you more aware of your teaching style and strengths, as well as any areas where further professional development might be needed. It also helps you to understand how your students learn, how best to teach them, and how to identify possible barriers to their learning. Ultimately, reflection helps students learn more effectively, while also helping you to become a more influential educator.

 

Incorporating Student Feedback on Teaching

The Student Feedback on Teaching (SFT), given at the end of the semester, will help you gain insight on the effectiveness of your teaching, which includes your ability to engage students, communicate clearly, foster critical thinking, and help students understand concepts. The SFT will be one of the components of your Teaching Portfolio.

For instructions on how to access your SFT, please click here.

When interpreting your SFT, it is useful to consider the following:

  1. What do the qualitative comments tell you about your teaching?
  2. What do the numbers tell you about your strengths?
  3. How can you further capitalise on your strength?
  4. What did you do differently this semester that might have improved your scores?
  5. Could you identify an area you would like to work on?
  6. What can you do differently to improve in that area?

You don't have to wait until the end of the semester to get feedback from your students. Many faculty members will periodically solicit informal student feedback throughout the semester. This could be in the form of a quick poll asking students what has worked for them so far, and what has not. You can find out more by attending our workshop on Integrating Feedback, which can be found on our Teaching & Learning Workshops page.


Developing Your Teaching Portfolio

The Teaching Portfolio is a compilation of selected information that documents and summarises your teaching style, methods, and effectiveness, by elaborating on four main categories:

  1. Teaching philosophy and rationale
  2. Teaching responsibilities and actions
  3. Evidence of teaching effectiveness
  4. Teaching development activities

You will learn how to construct and refine your Teaching Portfolio as part of the Foundations of University Teaching and Learning (FULT) programme, which is a required course for all new faculty members. Your Teaching Portfolio is not just useful for seeking Tenure and Promotion, it is also a great tool to help you to reflect, develop, and make improvements in your professional skills over time.


Participating in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is the systematic inquiry into pedagogical practices that are made public, peer reviewed, and shared, for the purpose of improving student learning and enhancing educational quality. If you have successfully tried and tested a pedagogical approach that worked in your class and would like to share it with a wider community, it is likely that others will benefit from your knowledge and experience. By participating in SoTL, you also can benefit from other people's knowledge and experience.

If you are interested in SOTL and testing a pedagogical practice, we have grants available to provide you with some funding and support.

 

Resources

Below is a selection of journals on teaching and learning. There is also a wealth of literature on higher education learning available at the NTU Library.