To: Mark Richards, Provost
From: Lynn Dietrich & Darcy Janzen, Co-chairs, Future of Teaching & Learning Working Group on Quality
Re: Status Report January 27, 2023
The first meeting of the Future of Teaching & Learning Working Group on Quality was held on November 30, 2022. At that meeting, convened by Phil Reid and Marisa Nickel, we met with group members and reviewed our charge. We were tasked with addressing this key question:
“Given the variety of instructional modalities we now need to support, how do we develop means to promote, aid and assess efforts to maintain/improve instructional quality for ALL modalities of student learning?”
This charge was the result of the efforts of a previous task force, which developed the following topics, tactics, and implications for our work:
- Evolving our current assessment strategies with an eye towards student learning outcomes and authentic assessment.
- Exploring the intersection of instructional quality with Tenure and Promotion
- Addressing legacy academic policies around quality (e.g., Distance Learning designation).
- Identifying support services for faculty throughout their careers to approach teaching as an ongoing reflective
- Establishing a shared language, common criteria and processes to promote and achieve quality instruction across
- How Universal Design and access for students with disabilities intersects with
- What short and long- term culture change at the UW would support
- Assessing needs for upgrading and expanding available educational
Our initial discussions led us to the decision to begin with the task of “establishing a shared language, common criteria, and processes to promote and achieve quality instruction across modalities.” The group agreed that developing this common criteria would then enable us to address the remaining topics/implications for the work. We envision a tool that would establish universal principles of quality teaching and learning that will be upheld across the university and that all faculty should strive to achieve. In addition, with the foundational principles as a starting point, campuses/units/departments/disciplines will be expected to develop practices that are applicable to their specific context/content that meet if not exceed the established UW principles of quality teaching and learning.
To this end, we are working towards a framework that would provide the following guidance
- A set of foundational principles (with definitions) that are characteristic of quality teaching and learning, that will be expected across the university, agnostic of course modality
- Examples of teaching and learning practices that will apply campus-wide
- A holistic approach providing tools and guidance to evaluate the principles in each of the three evaluation modalities, as appropriate
- Student evaluations of teaching
- Peer evaluations of teaching (in partnership with the Faculty Council on Teaching and Learning)
- Self-evaluations of teaching
- Recommendations for the use of evaluation tools and integration into faculty promotion, tenure, and merit (in partnership with the Faculty Council on Faculty Affairs)
- Expectations for the development of local examples of teaching and learning practices, as appropriate, aligned with the campus-wide foundational principles
- Campus-specific examples
- College/unit-specific examples
- Department/division/area level examples
- Discipline-specific examples
- Recommendations for teaching support and professional development
- Identifying existing resources on all three campuses
- Identifying gaps and forecasting resources needed to not only ensure faculty are prepared to conduct effective evaluations that align with the UW instructional quality framework but that they are supported in ongoing improvement of their teaching practices based on evaluation, identified goals/areas of focused
- Development of new resources as needed
- Exploring changes in legislation (in partnership with Faculty governance) to ensure clarity in language and alignment of processes for the implementation of the UW Instructional Quality Framework, evaluation, and support elements.
We are currently reviewing existing frameworks from other institutions, the elements of assessing effective teaching as defined in UW Faculty Code, Chapter 24, Section 24-32, Subsection C, and the evaluation rubric developed by Tri-campus Digital Learning Alliance, to establish our initial principles and compare examples of teaching and learning practices. Subcommittees have been formed and are addressing the specific issues of student evaluations of teaching, faculty self-evaluations of teaching and student learning, faculty support resources and professional development, and the format and functionality of the framework. Colleagues leading those groups have been asked to identify and include stakeholders outside of the working group who should be collaborators, and develop processes for ensuring transparency and for gathering input from the larger campus community. Additionally, after developing our initial draft of the framework, we will elicit feedback from a broader group.
Darcy Janzen, Director of Digital Learning, UW Tacoma
Lynn Dietrich, Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Programs and Teaching Professor, College of Education