Teaching Portfolios

Teaching Portfolios offer university professors and graduate TAs spaces to reflect on their teaching (as they create and revise), as well as to demonstrate to others what they have done already as teachers and how they plan to continue developing as professionals. The links below offer suggestions for how to create a teaching portfolio, with special attention to preparing portfolios for the various CTLT sponsored teaching awards. Currently, many schools are moving toward electronic and web-based teaching portfolios. These portfolios carry the advantage of not being as space-constrained as portfolios in three-ring binders, and because the artifacts are linked documents, teachers can use the web-based portfolio as a portal for directing readers to class Web sites and other pedagogical initiatives, which often contain a wealth of materials for demonstrating teaching effectiveness, innovation, etc. As teachers move toward web-based portfolios, however, they should be especially careful to check that they have abided by current policies regarding the legal and ethical use of student work.

What Is a Teaching Portfolio?

Brief Overview (Kathleen McKinney, ISU)
The Teaching Portfolio (U of Saskatchewan): This site contains useful tips for what to put in your portfolio, including a thoughtful discussion of the value of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, as well as how a teaching portfolio actually improves the teacher who creates it.

What's in a Teaching Portfolio?

A Dozen Ways to Document Your Teaching Effectiveness (E. Jane Melendez, ETSU)
The Teaching Portfolio (pdf) (Matthew Kaplan, U of Michigan): Kaplan outlines some of the key parts of effective teaching portfolios. Especially interesting are his suggestions in Appendix A for how to document your teaching.
Preparing a Teaching Portfolio (UT Austin): This manual includes tips for assembling the portfolio, including how to represent peer and student evaluations.

Electronic Teaching Portfolios

ETP: Multimedia Skills + Portfolio Development = Powerful Professional Development (Helen Barrett, UA-Anchorage): Barrett highlights how electronic portfolios differ from print-based ones and offers suggestions for a "stages" method of developing an ETP.
Online Teaching Portfolios (UT El Paso): An excellent collection of teaching portfolios, representing various disciplines and teachers from around the country. Particularly strong is the Teaching Portfolio of Joseph Braun, Jr., a faculty member in the College of Education at Illinois State University.
ProfPort @ ISU (Doug Love and Gerald McKean, Accounting): Although Love and McKean have used this system primarily for students, it could be equally useful for faculty who need to update their teaching portfolios frequently. This interface allows the user to select what materials to show at a given time - without removing them from the system altogether - so it becomes a highly customizable portfolio that can be modified for different teacher needs (job search, tenure & promotion, teaching award submission, etc.).

Sample Teaching Portfolios

Cheri Simonds (Communications)
Christopher D. Horvath (Philosophy)
David G. Loomis (Economics)
Joseph A. Braun, Jr. (Curriculum & Instruction)
Kathleen McKinney (Sociology)
Yvonne Unrau (Social Work)

Other Resources

Bibliography on Evaluating Teaching (Ohio State U)
Bibliography on Teaching Portfolios (Roslyn Wylie)
Designing a Teaching Portfolio (pdf) (Penn State)