Developing a Teaching Portfolio
Our face-to-face course on Developing a Teaching Portfolio is now available as an online self-paced Canvas course (for NUS staff only).
This self-paced course consists of four sessions, which progressively guides you towards a deeper understanding of how to construct a portfolio about your teaching experiences in higher education as well as your on-going development as a university teacher. We would like to point out that teaching is a complex endeavour and documenting your teaching is an equally challenging and dynamic process. In other words, there is no ‘one size fits all approach’ or simple ‘tips and tricks’ to being a good teacher; you have to develop the knowledge, skills, values and capabilities of good university teaching over time by learning from and with other colleagues and peers. Likewise, preparing a teaching portfolio cannot be done overnight, nor over a couple of weeks – it requires effort to collect multiple sources of evidence, analyse and interpret what you have collected over time, reflect, share and evaluate your practice and to write down these insights in a coherent, consistent and meaningful way.
Besides serving different purposes, such as for awards, promotion and job applications, we believe that developing a teaching portfolio will enhance your knowledge and skills as a reflective teacher. We hope that by engaging in the activities in this course, you will be able to kick-start your journey to document your university teaching in a meaningful and productive way.
As a caveat, this course is not designed to teach you how to teach well; rather, we intend to show that preparing a teaching portfolio has the benefits of enhancing and fostering good teaching practices, i.e., engaging in critical, reflective inquiry into your own teaching.
There are four main self-paced sessions in this course.
What is a teaching portfolio? What is good university teaching and how do you document your practices? This introductory session provides faculty members with an overview of developing a portfolio and aims to help you to start thinking about reflecting on and evidencing your own teaching practice. Aside from playing a role in documenting one’s achievement as an academic teacher, a teaching portfolio is further a tool for reflecting upon ongoing professional learning and personal growth. One of the main goals of this session are to examine the key components of a teaching portfolio: the preface and the teaching statement, which consists of a teaching philosophy and 2-3 impact narratives that provide evidence in support of claims as to one’s achievement. A second goal is to consider the complexity of university teaching and what good teaching looks like. This second goal is related to developing a better understanding of quality teaching in higher education.
How do you start preparing and developing a teaching portfolio at NUS? In this session, you will make use of a roadmap to explore and identify your teaching context – which includes what you teach, who you teach and how you teach. At the same time, the question prompts will help you to make explicit some of the underlying assumptions and beliefs that you hold about teaching and learning in higher education. These beliefs, goals and values which will be translated into your teaching philosophy statement in the next session.
Building on sessions 1 and 2, the third session will focus on drafting a teaching philosophy statement that articulates your beliefs and values about university teaching, as well as your goals and strategies as a teacher. The hands-on activities will guide you in writing your own teaching philosophy statement, examining and critiquing examples of other statements, and exchanging drafts for peer feedback and comments.
As documentation of teaching achievement, a portfolio requires demonstration of impact – evidence of your contributions to students’ education or, if relevant, to improving institutional practice at the university (educational leadership). Such evidence needs to be integrated into an argument rather than merely included as a long list of achievements. In this fourth session, you will learn to write an impact narrative, which is aligned to your teaching philosophy and provides a concise but meaningful account of your key contribution, backed by multiple sources of evidence.
Instructions for access to the Canvas course
(available from 1 Mar 2023)
Register here.
For more details, click here.
Important note
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For applications for appointment/promotion of Associate Professor (Educator Track): “The University requires mandatory participation in the formal teaching portfolio course at least once within the two-year period prior to a colleague’s application for promotion.” Please ensure that you have completed the abovementioned requirement. |
Consultation on Teaching Portfolio
CTLT offers one-to-one consultation to help you develop your teaching portfolio. After you have completed the self-paced online course, you may want to schedule a consultation to further discuss your portfolio writing by contacting Mark Gan at cdtgjs@nus.edu.sg.
For further information about the teaching portfolio course, please contact:
| Mark GAN Associate Director, CTLT Email: cdtgjs@nus.edu.sg |