Happy SoTL Blog Anniversary

Seven years ago (October 15, 2016), I began sharing these SoTL articles to a small group of colleagues who asked for current empirical evidence on effective teaching and learning. The initial post responded to faculty asking if student evaluations of teaching (SETs) had any relationship to teaching or learning. Over the years, I have shared many articles confirming that there is no correlation between students' perception and teaching effectiveness. Of course we value our students' input, but that is a different type of data. The inaugural post in 2016 shared an article to help determine effective teaching entitled, A Survey of 12 Strategies to Measure Teaching Effectiveness by Berk (2005).

In connection with the first SoTL Article Blog post, I would like to share updated research on effective teaching. The article “Rediscovering teaching in university: A scoping review of teacher effectiveness in higher education” by Mastrokoukou et al (2022). The author' aim to (a) list the [26] articles on teacher effectiveness since 1990, (b) identify the instruments that have been used to assess teacher effectiveness, and (c) highlight the most effective teaching approaches based on the literature. The research showed that student-centered teaching styles are more effective, engaging, and performance-enhancing.

The results show that there is no universal definition of effective higher education teaching. Likewise, the measurement of teacher effectiveness has remained vague. In a discussion of research-based indicators of effective teaching, Cruickshank and Haefele (1990) pointed out that “a tremendous underlying problem in evaluating teachers is that there is no agreement on what constitutes good or effective teaching

Further, three elements were identified to consider when evaluating teacher effectiveness:

Criteria: Characteristics of effective teaching.
Evidence: Documentation of instruction.
Standards: expectations of quality and quantity.

Additionally, the authors found that teacher effectiveness should broadly encompass competence in four areas:

Teaching style
Course design/organization
Student engagement
Determination of progress

I have been fortunate to support effective teaching over the years and enjoyed interacting with many of you on this blog. Some of you may recall that I developed a process that aligns with this recent literature review. My method integrates Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation. The Assessment stage addresses three further steps, which include a/n pre-observation; observation; and post-observation. Within the observation step, there are also three parts, a quantitative checklist; qualitative field narrative; and faculty flow diagram. If you are interested, I would be happy to share and discuss this model further.

References

Berk, R. (2005). Survey of 12 strategies to measure teaching effectiveness, International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 17(1), 48-62. http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe ISSN 1812-9129

Mastrokoukou S., Andronikos, K., Donche V., Chauliac M., Karagiannopoulou E., Christodoulides P., & Longobardi C. (2022). Rediscovering teaching in university: A scoping review of teacher effectiveness in higher education,Frontiers in Education, 7. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.861458. DOI=10.3389/feduc.2022.861458. ISSN=2504-284X