This portfolio was created as part of Michigan State University’s Certification in College Teaching. This portfolio includes descriptions of courses and workshops I have participated in along with teaching materials I have created based on what I have learned. The materials included here were curated based on the requirements listed in the Certification in College Teaching Portfolio Graduate Student Checklist.
Core Competency 1: Developing Discipline-Related Teaching Strategies
Description
Course: AL883: Special Topics: Practicum in Blended and Online Learning
Instructor: Scott Schopieray
Semester: Fall 2019
AL883 focused on the design and development of both hybrid and fully online courses. Each student was asked to develop a project tied to their own subject area. In this course, students reviewed a variety of theory related to digital and hybrid pedagogy as we built our own online courses. Throughout the semester, students were asked to make weekly blog posts as well as participate in online discussion with pre-assigned groups. The course was divided into three main themes: (1) Educational Theory and Teaching Practice; (2) Designing and Constructing a Digital Course; and (3) Conducting Educational Research and Assessing Digital Courses.
Artifacts & Rationale
- Course Syllabus
- The course syllabus describes all of the required readings, class activities, and projects for the course. It lists all of the learning goals as well as the grading criteria.
- Course Website
- The course website expands on the course content as described in the syllabus. It links to full assignment instructions as well as lectures and other course content.
Developed Materials & Rationale
- DH 101 Course Website (Final Project)
- I developed this course website for an imagined course titled Introduction to Digital Humanities. I designed this course for undergraduate students with no prior experience in the digital humanities. It includes a sample lecture, sample assignments, and some potential readings.
- Final Presentation
- This screencast of my final project provides insight into why I made the decisions I did when creating the course. It provides an overview of the course, a description of the course structure and content, and course technology.
- Class blog
- My blog for AL883 contains all of the weekly assignments from the semester, as well as a draft of the initial idea I had for a mentored teaching project and my first ever attempt at writing a teaching philosophy statement.
Reflection
AL883 was a very important course in my development as a teacher-scholar for a variety of reasons. It was the first ever fully online course I had ever taken, as I had attended a small liberal arts college for my undergraduate degree and it did not have online classes at the time. This course was also one of the first classes I took as a graduate student at MSU, and thus was where I helped to discover what kind of graduate student I would be. I also had never received any instruction in pedagogy other than the initial teaching assistant trainings offered by the graduate school. Of course, I did not know this at the time, but it was very timely in that all of us would frantically be helping to move courses online with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic that closed the university in the middle of the following spring semester.
Through this course, I was introduced to a variety of technologies that I would be able to then use in my own teaching. Prior to AL883, I had never used Microsoft Teams or MSU Domains. I had minimal experience blogging, which became an important part of many of my courses at MSU, and the weekly assignments helped me develop a digital presence on my personal website kiknowles.com. This course introduced me to concepts such as backwards design for learning and Bloom’s Taxonomy. While I was already serving as a TA for an IAH course, this was the first time I was exposed to a lot of the theory behind a variety of teaching practices. It was also where I first learned about many of the elements integral to making courses digitally accessible.
It was through this class that I designed my first ever standalone course, and while I have not had the opportunity to teach it during my time at MSU, it heavily influenced the standalone IAH courses I taught later during my career as a graduate student. While I had built websites before, this was my first time developing an entire course. As such, for the first time I had to create learning goals and objectives and then curate course content from there. I also learned a lot of important rules around copyright and fair use. In fact, this course helped me learn how to make all of my course materials free for and accessible to all of my students in a legal and ethical way. Overall, AL883 was my first in-depth look into course design, and it proved to be incredibly foundational in the way I have approached building all courses since then.
Core Competency 2: Creating Effective Learning Environments
Description
Workshop: Creating Effective Learning Environments
Facilitator: Kirstin Parkin (Assistant Professor, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics)
Date Attended: Thursday, May 11th, 2023, 1:00-2:30 PM (as part of the Certification in College Teaching Institute)
This workshop covered a number of strategies for creating effective learning environments. This workshop addressed issues of developing inclusive classrooms and understanding the nuances of concepts such as equity. We discussed the importance of being relatable, providing examples at all points of the course, the best way to divide cognitive load, and equitable grading practices.
Artifacts & Rationale
- Workshop PowerPoint
- This is the PowerPoint Dr. Parkin presented during the workshop. It includes some of the activities and discussion points from the session, such as an introductory survey and prompts encouraging us to find examples of “finished products” in our fields.
Developed Materials & Rationale
- Annotated Syllabus
- During her presentation, Dr. Parkin suggested having students annotate the syllabus with their questions or points of interest rather than doing a graded syllabus quiz. I tried this out with my Spring Semester 2024 course ENG218: Introduction to Shakespeare to great success. I have redacted student names, but you can see how they engaged with the syllabus in a variety of ways.
- Introductory Survey
- Based on the introductory survey Dr. Parkin provided in the workshop, I developed my own. I have since used this survey in every class that I have taught to get to know my students better. This has opened doors for conversations with students about how I can better support them, and it set a standard for open communication about strengths and struggles throughout the rest of the semester.
Reflection
What skills and techniques did I learn that will help me become a better educator?
During this session, I learned easy ways to emphasize inclusion and equity in every element of the course. Additionally, I gained insight as to a variety of ways of modeling what it looks like to be successful in a discipline, such as providing examples of what a final product of a learning goal would look like. This will help students better envision how their work fits into the field. While I have always been a proponent of the idea that instructors can make mistakes and not always know the right answer, I learned ways to practically demonstrate to students that mistakes are okay to make in the classroom.
What things am I still uncertain about regarding this topic that I need to investigate further in the future?
We ran out of time in this session, but something on one of the slides I noticed we passed over quickly was something about equitable grading. While I would like to further explore equity in a variety of classroom practices, equitable grading practices specifically is not a topic I am super familiar with. I aim to be equitable in everything I do in the classroom, but I want to investigate specific examples regarding assessment. Another topic I’d like to learn more about is the way to structure a class so high impact activities happen in class and lower impact activities happen outside of class. I was initially thinking of this in terms of a flipped classroom, but it was briefly mentioned that even that format isn’t ideal.
How can I apply materials from this session to my own class to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning?
I already do this to some extent, but I think I can develop a better survey to have students complete at the beginning of class to connect with them. In the past, I have used a survey just to learn more about how they prefer to learn, but there are things I can do to humanize myself a bit more and appear more welcoming. For instance, I think the example of asking for a song that they enjoy and creating a class playlist is a great idea that we discussed. Ultimately, this session gave me ways to become more relatable. I do admit I try to keep a distance from my students as a GA, but I can find ways to do that without making myself vulnerable in a way that could negatively impact me professionally.
Core Competency 3: Incorporating Technology in your Teaching
Description
Workshop: Incorporating Technology in Teaching
Facilitator: Stefanie Baier (Director of Instructional Development, Graduate School)
Date Attended: Friday, May 12th, 2023, 9:00-10:15 AM (as part of the Certification in College Teaching Institute)
This workshop discussed the significance of making sure that the technology instructors incorporate into their classrooms support their learning goals. We explored a variety of examples of how technology might be incorporated into the classroom and tried out some different digital tools. We also had the opportunity to imagine how we might incorporate digital tools into our own classrooms and pitch potential activities specific to our disciplines.
Artifacts & Rationale
- Discussion Prompts
- This worksheet outlines a prompt that we discussed during this workshop. I imagined an exercise in which I could use technology (such as the digital tool Voyant) to help teach poetry. We brainstormed ideas in small groups and then addressed some issues of incorporating technology in your teaching using Google’s JamBoard.
- JamBoard Activity
- This is a PDF of the Jamboard that accompanied the above activity. On this JamBoard participants addressed the following questions: (1) how does this practice relate to the use of technology?; (2) what is technology?; and (3) why, when, and how would you use technology?. This encourage us to better understand how technology can be used to promote learning goals rather than just for the sake of incorporating technology.
Developed Materials & Rationale
- Understanding Copyright and Licenses Activity
- I developed this activity to help students how better consider how they can more meaningful create digital projects. Dr. Baier’s workshop made me realize that we often ask students to create digital projects and use technology, but we don’t necessarily teach them how to do so ethically. This assignment intended to help students interact with internet sources as more responsible consumers and creators.
- Engaging with AI
- Conversations around ChatGPT and other generative AI were taking off around the time of the CCTI, and this in combination with Dr. Baier’s website made me think about the technology our students might use that would circumvent learning goals. In this activity, I asked students to interact with AI chatbots in order to better understand how they work, how they might undermine their work, and how this might cause issues regarding ethics and academic integrity.
Reflection
What skills and techniques did I learn that will help me become a better educator?
While I had previously been vaguely familiar with backwards design, it was nice to revisit this idea in a more in-depth way. I knew that the idea was to develop activities based on the goals and objectives, but as a GA who had primarily taught recitation sections this is not something I often had the opportunity to do since the course goals and content were often already determined by the instructor of record. I had not used JamBoard or iClicker before, so it was nice to learn about new technologies I could potentially incorporate into class. Also, I have heard that learning styles are a myth, but it was nice to receive an explanation as to why.
What things am I still uncertain about regarding this topic that I need to investigate further in the future?
I would like to look more into the learning styles myth. While I know it’s not accurate, I’ve heard about it so much I find myself referring back to them without realizing. I don’t know if there is something that has necessarily replaced learning styles, but I’m curious what elements of student learning are the best to build course activities from. I would also like to investigate other technology options specifically at MSU that are available that I may not have been familiar with before. Additionally, while I understand it in theory, I definitely need to actually go through the process of backward design to better understand how it works. I will probably do this with my course in the fall, as it is the first stand alone course I will be teaching in my department.
How can I apply materials from this session to my own class to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning?
As stated above, I don’t think I will understand backward design fully until I actually try implementing it for myself. My fall course will be constructed via backward design. Additionally, I will probably incorporate iClicker into class. It seems like a nice, different way to encourage participation in class. I also intend to emphasize how technology is being used to serve a particular goal rather than just including it for the sake of saying the course uses technology. I need to be deliberate in that when designing my syllabi and class activities.
Core Competency 4: Understanding the University Context
Description
Workshop: Understanding the University Context—Aligning Teaching w/ Different Institutional Types & Missions
Facilitator: Judith Stoddart (Associate Provost for University Arts and Collections)
Date Attended: Thursday, May 11th, 2023, 9:15-10:15 AM (as part of the Certification in College Teaching Institute)
This workshop covered the role university context in developing a teaching practice. Through this workshop we not only discussed the context of MSU, but also a variety of other kinds of institutions. We explored the many facets of institutions of higher education and how each of these impact the mission of the university and how that impacts both instructors and students.
Artifacts & Rationale
- Teaching Inventory & Self-Assessment
- This inventory asked participants to consider their own teaching history, including at which institutions and what courses they have taught. Through this process, participants also were asked to reflect on the students that they interacted with at each of these institutions and in these courses as well as our own approaches to understanding teaching and learning. Ultimately, this encouraged me to consider how my own teaching practices align with a variety of contexts.
- Samples of Institutional Mission Statements and Statements on Teaching
- This worksheet provides a variety examples of institutions of higher education and each institution’s mission. During this workshop, small groups of participants were assigned specific institutions and dissect their mission statement. My group was assigned Grand Valley State University, a Comprehensive Public University, and we had in-depth discussions about how teaching featured in the institution’s mission.
Developed Materials & Rationale
- Syllabus Information
- Following this workshop, I wanted to be more conscious of making sure my students also were aware of the wider university context and how it influences some of the decisions I make in designing my courses. As such, I created syllabus pages that I can move across my courses that help students to be better aware of university policies and resources.
- Community Norms & Guidelines
- This workshop also inspired me to start a new activity at the beginning of each course I teach in which I ask students to collaborate on creating a series of community norms and guidelines. University context is incredibly important, and this process allowed me to engage in conversations with my students about university policies and then adapt them to our course specifically in more accessible language. This proved to be very effective and helped to define parameters for the course outside of content-specific materials.
Reflection
What skills and techniques did I learn that will help me become a better educator?
I learned more about the significance of being context specific in your approach to teaching. Your institution, department, and student body are all important factors in determining your teaching and learning environment and all play off one another. While I had been aware of the differences across different institution types, I had previously given little thought to the nuances of how these factors might change the landscape across a singular institution.
What things am I still uncertain about regarding this topic that I need to investigate further in the future?
I need to learn more about the different types of institutions. I have attended an R1 and a liberal arts college, and I have worked at a regional comprehensive university. However, there are so many other factors I hadn’t really considered before – religious affiliation, for-profit, and online only. During the exercise, my group was assigned to examine Grand Valley State University’s (a comprehensive institution) mission, vision, and teaching requirements from the faculty handbook. I’d like to revisit the other institutions and examine more examples of where teaching is placed front and center in their mission and vision and whether the way teaching and learning is described differently than it is in the faculty handbook.
How can I apply materials from this session to my own class to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning?
As I am going on the job market next year, I have a better idea of what to look for when examining institutions. I can help curate my teaching philosophy statement to fit this and I can better understand what values I need to prioritize in a classroom at the particular institution. While I have been aware of my institutional, department, and student contexts, I have not previously thought about how all of those factors might interact and how different classrooms might be different across the same institution. For instance, here at MSU I have only taught IAH courses, but in the fall I will be teaching an English course. These are different departments so they will both have their own curricular expectations, but I will also most likely be getting a vastly different group of students in a departmental elective course versus a large university requirement. I am looking forward to being able to reflect on these differences after I teach in the fall and have a better understanding of the intricacies of these contexts within a singular institution.
Core Competency 5: Assessing Student Learning
Summary of Project & Findings
As part of the CTLI fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year, I developed the Digital Accessibility Toolkit with the hope that it would help educators at MSU better understand the importance of digital accessibility and raise awareness about the resources available to them at MSU. I used this work as the basis for a workshop, where I instructed my fellow graduate teaching assistants and members of the CTLI community on digital accessibility best practices with the goal of helping them begin to implement digital accessibility practices in their own classrooms. The toolkit was completed by April 24, 2024, and I taught a workshop in partnership with CTLI and the Graduate School on July 16, 2024. Participants completed a pre- and post- survey to assess whether the workshop better familiarized them with the resources available to them at MSU and whether they will be more intentional in incorporating digital accessibility into their courses in the future.
My goal was to determine the knowledge educators at Michigan State University have about digital accessibility in the undergraduate classroom. I wanted attendees of the workshop to be able to demonstrate a knowledge of how to identify principles of digital accessibility and what resources at MSU can help them uphold those principles. I wanted to answer: Can participants identify accessibility principles at play, and if they need help regarding digital accessibility at MSU, how can you discover that information? Upon completion of the workshop participants should be able to:
- Explain the importance of implementing digital accessibility practices in the classroom
- Recognize the concepts involved in universal design for learning (UDL)
- Identify resources related to digital accessibility that are available at MSU
- Discuss possibilities for making their new and/or existing courses accessible
To determine whether participants in the workshop were able to increase their knowledge regarding digital accessibility principles and the resources available to them at MSU, I developed a pre-assessment survey and a post-assessment survey that include a confidence questionnaire, multiple choice questions about universal design for learning, and space for participants to list where they would go for accessibility help at MSU. Additionally, I included a short sample syllabus and asked participants to identify any accessibility issues they could find. The surveys should not take more than ten minutes. In the post-assessment survey, I also asked participants to share what they would change about the workshop so I could improve it in the future.
The workshop went well, and participants were engaged. Despite agreeing to fill out the assessments when they signed up for the workshop, most participants did not do so prior to arriving. As such, I ended up circulating the pre-assessment at the beginning of the workshop. During the workshop, I was able to address a variety of questions and point to specific MSU examples. I also provided space for reflection in which participants were asked to identify times they have incorporated digital accessibility in their own teaching, and in small groups participants determined how to make a document more accessible based on what we had discussed. Since so few had responded to the pre-assessment before the workshop, I included time at the end of the workshop for participants to complete the post-assessment.
Ultimately, the difference in response to the pre-assessment and post-assessment demonstrated that by the end of the workshop participants were able to better identify and implement digital accessibility practices as well as locate resources for assistance at MSU. In the confidence assessment, responses to the pre-assessment indicated that most participants either felt not confident to somewhat confident in identifying and incorporating principles of digital accessibility. In the post-assessment, responses ranged more from somewhat confident to extremely confident. Additionally, in the post-assessment more participants were able to the principles of Universal Design for Learning. Perhaps most importantly, whereas in the pre-assessment very few participants could name specific points of contact for gathering digital accessibility resources at MSU, in the post-assessment they each could name at least two. They were also better able to identify specific examples of digital accessibility fixes in a sample document.
I was satisfied with the outcome of the workshop, although I would revise the assessment if I were to do this again. I would probably try to format the question about identifying accessibility fixes in the sample document to be less open-ended, but otherwise the assessment seemed to work nicely. I will be running the workshop again in the Fall Semester, and I plan to also incorporate some of the feedback I received from participants to design activities to better help the connect with the learning goal of identifying accessibility errors in a document by going through a document and making some of those changes together.
Artifacts & Rationale
- Workshop Slides
- These were the slides I used to teach the Navigating Digital Accessibility @ MSU workshop on July 16, 2024. I have removed the slides with a link to the survey so as not to corrupt the record of the survey data. These slides cover topics related to understanding the importance of digital accessibility, designing an accessible course, quick tips for digital accessibility, and resources at MSU.
- Pre-Assessment Survey
- The pre-assessment survey attempts to identify how familiar workshop participants were with concepts related to digital accessibility. The survey includes questions regarding participant confidence in identifying and implementing digital accessibility practices, familiarity with universal design for learning, and identifying how familiar participants are with digital accessibility resources on campus. Since the results are being shared, participation in the survey is anonymous.
- Pre-Assessment Data
- The pre-assessment data revealed that participants were primarily somewhat confident when identifying accessibility principles in practice and implementing them in their own courses, but there was definitely room for growth. Additionally, participants seemed unsure of where to go for help at MSU when needing assistance.
- Post-Assessment Survey
- The post-assessment survey is very similar to the pre-assessment survey to determine if the learning activity helped participants learn the information needed to meet workshop goals. However, I did incorporate new questions so participants could inform me what they thought the workshop was missing and what they might take forward into their courses. I will consider this feedback when revising the workshop, which I will be teaching again on November 4, 2024.
- Post-Assessment Data
- The post-assessment data revealed that through participation in the workshop, participants were able to increase their confidence in identifying and implementing digital accessibility principles. Unfortunately, not all participants completed the post-assessment survey (although most did). Perhaps the most significant achievement was that participants were able to name a variety of resources that could support their work with digital accessibility at MSU.
Worksheets & Forms
Description
Workshop: Assessing Student Learning
Facilitator: Rique Campa (Associate Dean, Graduate School)
Date Attended: Thursday, May 11th, 2023, 2:45-4:15 PM (as part of the Certification in College Teaching Institute)
This workshop covered the concept of backwards design and how to build a course out from learning objectives. We explored Bloom’s Taxonomy and the idea of teaching as research to better understand how to develop a strong assessment rooted in learning goals.
Reflection
What skills and techniques did I learn that will help me become a better educator?
I have heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy, this was the first time I’ve used it to develop learning goals. Additionally, I was unfamiliar with the concept of teaching as research. This is not something I have really experienced in the context of an English department. I also learned more about developing a solid research question. While I have this in the context of writing papers and my dissertation, I’ve never had to develop a research question that involved developing instruments to distribute and measure data.
What things am I still uncertain about regarding this topic that I need to investigate further in the future?
I definitely need to continue working on developing a research question that will generate useful results. Additionally, I would like to talk about the process of developing learning goals with someone in my discipline, as many of the examples discussed in this session were STEM specific. I would also like to learn more about how to connect learning goals to assessment. While I understand that goals should directly link to outcomes, I have never really thought about the sheer variety of assessment options and how some might better fit my learning goals than others.
How can I apply materials from this session to my own class to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning?
Following this workshop, I intend to go into my future classes imagining how I can adjust assessments to better fit my students’ needs. While I’ve never experienced the extreme example of a class failing a specific exam, I do think that when I am teaching English courses to non-majors who may not be used to writing humanities papers there are probably ways I can better adapt to suit these students’ needs. To do this, I need to prepare a variety of different kinds of assessment that I can be ready to include in my courses. I also intend to incorporate more pre-assessment activities for my students. I have generally just focused on post-activity assessments, but I see how important it is to track the growth and not just the outcome.
Teaching Philosophy
Throughout my time as an educator at Michigan State University (MSU), I have taught a variety of different courses, ranging from large humanities lecture courses that fulfill university general education requirements to smaller, seminar-sized English courses. Regardless of the size of the class, I strive to find ways to dismantle hierarchies in the classroom and create space for students to set their own terms and goals. I build ongoing conversations between myself and my students to encourage them to teach and learn from one another. We work together to set goals and objectives that compliment the ones in the syllabus. I distribute anonymous assessment forms so students can tell me how I can better support their learning. I incorporate workshop days where they can engage with and provide feedback on their peers’ work. Some of the most generative moments in the classroom come from creating opportunities to experiment and play. I prioritize working to discover where students find access points into the works we explore in class. Regardless of their major, students benefit from learning research methodologies related to the humanities to develop arguments and assess the legitimacy of the sources they encounter.
At MSU, I have served as an instructor for a variety of Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities (IAH) courses, ranging from ones that focus on empire in the Mediterranean to dangerous art. I have also designed original IAH courses: one on “literature, culture, and identities” that focused on “Redefining Renaissance: from the Early Modern to the COVID-19 era” and one on “self, society, and technology” with the theme “Text and Tech: How Literature Shaped Technology, and How Technology Changed the Way we Read.” In both classes, I ask students to develop digital projects in the form of a multimedia poster, website, or podcast that connects with audiences in their own fields. I currently teach ENG218: Introduction to Shakespeare, which is specifically for non-majors. In this course, I ask students to read plays from each genre and discuss them through lenses of race, gender, disability, and power. Students engage with early modern texts by participating in close reading assignments, reviewing performances, reflecting on visits to special collections, and developing their own adaptations.
I often incorporate digital tools and methods into my courses. To scaffold digital projects, I create weekly activities that ask them to analyze existing digital projects and investigate Creative Commons licenses. In “Text and Tech,” I ask students to engage with AI chatbots to analyze the way they might ethically engage with this technology while developing a more concrete understanding of how this tool functions. For my Shakespeare course, I ask students to first engage with one of Shakespeare’s sources–for instance, Holinshed’s Chronicles–to explore how the way the text is written is different from what they are used to before comparing it to Shakespeare’s plays. Or, I ask students to break down sonnets line by line to annotate both their technical and stylistic elements before reading them aloud to the class in the original verse and then their own words. Ultimately, I encourage students to play with the materials we encounter.
When teaching courses for students of diverse backgrounds, I strive to design activities that incorporate a wide range of skills that are applicable to a variety of situations across fields. It is important to me that students recognize how the humanities are a critical part of everyday life; even if they are not in a humanities specific field, I hope to help my students realize that being able to participate in humanistic thought is invaluable.