I have had the opportunity to teach a variety of courses in a variety of settings with distinct student bodies and consider this experience to have been both determining and transformative in my development as a professional educator. As a means to evidence teaching adaptability and effectiveness what follows is a summary of my teaching evaluations across three academic semesters.
I taught two semesters of Juvenile Crime and Delinquency, a lower level sociology course open to all majors and class levels at a large state university predominantly composed of traditional (young, full time, on-campus) students. Both classes were attended by majors and non-majors and were predominantly composed of freshmen and sophomores. The fall (semester 1) session had a 95% response rate, with 79 students enrolled and 75 completing the end-of semester evaluation. The Spring (semester 2) session was less consistent, with 57 students enrolled and 45 (79%) completing the course evaluation. Overall, the course received a rating of 4.64 out of 5 in the fall semester and an overall rating of 4.35 in the spring.
The Introduction to Criminal Justice course I taught at a small, private institution, was a lower-level survey course cross listed under the sociology and criminology major, but open to majors and non-majors alike. Response rates for this course were 100% (N=3) for the section cross listed through Sociology and 93% (n=28) for the section cross listed under Criminology. Overall course ratings were 1.30 and 1.93 respectively. Please note that at this institution lower course ratings equate to greater teaching effectiveness
The Child Maltreatment course I taught at another large, state university with a large proportion of commuting students, was different than the courses just described predominantly because it was an upper level course that fulfills one of the violence concentration requirements for majors, but was open to upper classmen from other disciplines. Semester 1, the teaching evaluation response rate for this course was 77% and the overall course rating was 4.86 out of 5.
As a function of these three courses in three different academic institutions, I have gained experience teaching large and small classrooms; to major and non-majors; in upper and lower level courses. This set of circumstances have also allowed me to teach courses categorized as elective, core, and required; with traditional and non-traditional students; in private and public institutions. Recognizing that each setting, each student body, and each course’s strategic position in the curriculum requires that adaptations be made, has allowed me to become a more effective and adaptive educator.
Recognizing that people have different learning preferences, I often employ a variety of teaching methodologies and assessments in my courses including
I always incorporate relevant newspaper articles, music, movies, documentaries, and other online media sources in each of my courses and use them as a platform for short written responses or classroom discussion. The goal is really to keep the students interested, motivated and excited to improve their understanding and retention of complex topics.
I often use low-stake quizzes to encourage the completion of the reading assignments. Exams, both midterm and final, are used to assess student recall, understanding, and their ability to apply the ideas and concepts discussed throughout the course. These are done online and are predominantly composed of multiple choice questions. In-class guided exercises, group work, debates and reflective papers are used to help the students (1) draw connections between ideas, concepts, and courses, (2) evaluate, critique or defend a position, (3) and design or modify a program or policy. Rubrics for all written assignments and oral presentations are provided ahead of time, students are encouraged to refer to them as they draft and/or prepare their assignments.
Below are the summaries of my course evaluations for three different courses in three different institutions over the course of the three semesters. Table 1 summarizes the mean scores for two sessions of a Juvenile Crime and Delinquency course taught at a large state university predominantly attended by traditional students. Table 2 summarizes the student evaluations for two sessions of a Child Maltreatment course taught at another state university, but this one with a very large proportion of non-traditional students. Table 3 summarizes two sessions of an Intro to Criminal Justice course taught at a small, private college.
I was happy to see that the evaluation criteria that received the highest ratings were among the ones that I hold to be the most important and therefore reference in my teaching philosophy statement. Fairness to students is one of my guiding principles. It is the standard that I continuously go back to when making any decision regarding student issues, conflicts of schedules and accommodations. As stated in my teaching philosophy, I work very hard at trying to reach a balance between being fair and consistent and being responsive to individual student needs. I was delighted to see that it consistently received high ratings (across terms, courses, and institution).
Other criteria that received high ratings, particularly during semester 1, were encouraged discussion (4.82), showed enthusiasm for subject (4.89) and showed respect for students (4.89). These are particularly important to me. First, because I don’t believe you can run a successful, invigorating, and thought-provoking course without class participation and discussion. Second, because I believe both students and teachers need to be engaged in course work. I adhere to the maxim that claims that enthusiasm begets enthusiasm and I purposely portray my passion for teaching and research in order to motivate my students. Third, because without respectful communication, we cannot adequately discuss, and therefore learn about, the types of complex, controversial, politically-ridden, and sensitive topics we often study in Sociology, Criminology and Victimology courses such as racial profiling, stop and frisk policies, removing children from their home, mandatory arrest laws, no-drop prosecution, and statutory rape laws.
I am particularly keen on the fact that the combination of these criteria is aligned with (1) my teaching style, which is primarily discussion-based, even in survey courses that require the instruction of a wide array of topics and (2) my adherence to the belief that learning is a collaborative effort where both the students and I have unique knowledge to contribute to the discussion. If I am unable to encourage and reinforce an environment where the students feel “safe” to speak up, I would not be able to successfully adhere to a key component of my teaching philosophy and style, an important course goal, and a crucial learning objective, namely collaborative learning, critical thinking and effective communication skills.
Enthusiasm for and interest in my students’ learning were also very highly rated by the students at different institutions. I suspected that I had succeeded in promoting a positive classroom environment where everyone gets an opportunity to express their thoughts, opinions, and perspectives in a respectful manner, but these results allowed to me to conclude that this is in fact the case. More impressive is the fact that the results were consistent across courses, institutions, and semesters. Lastly, these findings are important to me because as a sociologist, I am keen to perceiving the process of teaching and learning as a shared learning experience that hinges on social interactions within and outside the classroom.
Formal student evaluations are informative, as just demonstrated above, but they are also imperfect. One of their main weaknesses is that they don’t allow us to correct or address student issues and concerns as they occur, but rather give us information we could only address at a much later date. To circumvent this issue, I continuously seek informal feedback from my students. I never miss an opportunity to ask, “how do you think the course is going?” “Are you understanding everything?” “Are the quizzes helping?”, and so on. I also conduct an anonymous mid-term evaluation where I ask my students three very simple questions: What do you think is going well? What do you think is not going well? How can I make the course better? I review their feedback and present the summary of their feedback in class. When appropriate, I make adjustments to the course. When not appropriate, I explain to them why the changes they proposed are not possible, often by simply referencing to the course goals and learning objectives.
As it pertains to written feedback, most comments were positive, but one of the concerns students expressed relates to the pace of the course. They rightfully stated that sometimes the pace was too fast. Discussions become interesting and informative and tracking time under those circumstances becomes more difficult. To address this concern, I decided to stay true to my philosophy that students are adults and therefore responsible for their learning. Part of their personal responsibility includes completing all assigned reading. Holding them responsible and accountable for the content covered in the reading assignments subsequently allows me to spend class time discussing, expanding upon, and critically analyzing some of the interesting or controversial topics brought up in the reading, as opposed to lecturing.
I am aware, based on both research and anecdotal evidence, that students do not complete the assigned readings. To get around this problem, I assign multiple online, pre-class quizzes throughout the semester that individually are relatively low-stakes, but in combination are worth a substantial portion of the course. I often drop the lowest quiz grade to account for “life happening”. This aligns with my philosophy that students are adults responsible for their own learning but need structure because they are still maturing as learners.
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One of the hardest things I had to learned this past academic year is that effective teaching isn’t only about applying the scholarship of teaching and learning. There are a series of contextual factors that have to be considered in order to have a “successful” course. The list of contextual factors are endless, but the two that are most relevant are the students’ prior knowledge on the topic and appropriate level of difficulty inherent to the course design and requirements.
This past-academic year I got the opportunity to teach two of my favorite courses, Research Methods and Statistics. I quickly learned these courses, which are more technical and skills- based, required a different teaching approach than the courses I had previously taught. I created what I thought was the ideal Research Methods course, not realizing that the student’s prior knowledge of the subject was minimal. Student evaluations of the course were below average predominantly because the difficulty level was too high. The first time I taught the course, the two major assignments were a group, mixed method proposal and two academic article analyses. These assignments, while well thought out and important, were not as successful as I had anticipated. Based on student feedback, I was able to realize that my course design was more appropriate for a higher-level course. The following semester, with the help of colleagues, I restructured the course to be more manageable. The research article analyses were dropped and the research proposal was divided into four separate sections due throughout the semester, instead of one major assignment at the end. Splitting the proposal allowed me to not just provide structure to the course (and therefore the students), but also allowed me to give them meaningful feedback via smaller formal assignments.
Informal feedback was constantly given via multiple “workshops” the first semester, but I consistently found that more than half of the students were ill-prepared to discuss the progress on their group-based proposal. Turning the “pieces” into manageable formal assignments helped keep students accountable and on pace to complete a semester long assignment.
Student feedback following changes were more positive. Some changes were implemented during the semester (as detailed below) and some changes will take place the next time I teach this course. Below are
In terms of what went well:
Some students expressed concerns surrounding the literature review portion. As a result, we took additional class time to go over the specifics of the assignment and worked through several examples in class for the literature review. For future assignments, I decided to review the assignment requirements before, during, and after the content relevant to the assignment was covered.
Some students expressed concerns surrounding online, in-class exams. To address this issue, I continued to provide paper copies of exam for those who requested it. I also made sure they understood this was an option available to them
As a way to encourage diligent reading habits, students had to turn-in reading notes prior to class. Some students expressed concerns regarding how strictly these were graded. As a result, these were subsequently graded on a pass/fail basis. While alleviating instructor burden, I’m not sure this was an effective means of dealing with this concern. When I teach this course again, I will revert back to doing online, quizzes prior to class. This helps me achieve the same objective, reduces instructor burden, and responds to students’ concerns regarding grading.
Lastly, some students expressed concerns regarding how much weight was given to class participation. To address this concern, I reiterated the importance of developing, good communication skills and how this can be linked to self-advocacy in the future. I also made clear how class participation was graded, as a 10% weight for attendance and participation is not unreasonable. I encouraged students to ask questions when concepts and ideas were unclear and informed them of the fact that this too is a form of class participation. Lastly, I continued to encourage extra credit as a way to compensate for points lost on class participation for students who were overwhelmed by the idea of speaking up in class,