VI. Analyzing and Improving Your Teaching

Consultations to Analyze Teaching

To decide why your teaching works well and what improvements can be made, you need to look at it objectively, by yourself or with a sympathetic advisor. You can find such consultants in your supervising faculty member if you are a TA, the colleague with whom you team teach, peers in any department, or Teaching Resource Center staff members. Whether you work with a consultant or alone, resultant analyses and evaluations are formative in nature: they exist to help you improve, not to compare you with anyone else or judge the value of your work.
Some teachers tend to care so deeply about their teaching that it becomes synonymous with themselves. Such an instructor may equate feeling unsuccessful in the classroom with some personal lack and thus recoil from scrutinizing what doesn't work or from allowing a colleague to see it. If you find yourself shrinking from the thought of analyzing your teaching, feeling that your classroom should not be "invaded" by any other instructor, take a bold step now. The longer you delay, the more difficult the change and the less likely you will become the really fine teacher you could. Read on; one of the suggested analytical methods may feel comfortable to you.

Consulting with a Colleague

Acquiring information about your teaching from colleagues should not be unidirectional or hierarchical. The best collegial assistance works in both directions and at all levels. If you are at the lower end of the hierarchy, you will not, of course, be able to establish such a system; but you can initiate mutual classroom observations and/or videotapings that will benefit both you and your colleague. Here are some suggestions:

• Begin with someone you feel comfortable with.
  
  
• Request that the colleague visit your class or watch with you a videotape of one of your classes. Note aspects of your teaching you'd like an outsider's opinion about: How clearly do you follow your stated outline? How can you encourage all students to discuss? How could you better explain difficult concepts? Limit your points of observation to four.
  
  
• Meet with your observer for fifteen to thirty minutes to discuss your interests and decide exactly what the observer will look for. What evidence will help you analyze your questions about your teaching? If the issue is equal participation in discussion, the observer might note how you call on students, how much wait-time you allow, what eye contact you make with various students, how well students pay attention, and how well students have apparently prepared. Considering evidence rather than impressions keeps the analysis objective.
  
  
• As class begins, introduce the observer to the students in whatever way you prefer. Sometimes instructors are concerned about students' reaction to an outside observer or camera. But experience shows that although a videotaped or observed class is, no doubt, subtly changed by the presence of an unfamiliar person, students normally appear to forget the camera or observer after about ten minutes. In effect, if you aren't bothered by the camera, they won't be. Make it clear that the observer (or camera) will help you improve your teaching.
  
  
• As soon as possible after class, in a relaxed setting, review the observer's notes together and draw conclusions about what the evidence means. You may find that you focus your eye contact and questions on students in the front. The observer may have noted that the problematic non-discussants spent a lot of time flipping through assigned reading. By examining appropriate detailed notes, you can draw useful conclusions yourself: for instance, you may decide that students were flipping pages because they were confused.
  
  
• Finally, decide what few teaching changes you will make to solve each problem. For instance, talking individually with the students who seem unprepared is a logical first step. Making a conscious effort to look more frequently at the students in back and calling on them directly may help.

If the observation goes well, as it will if you follow these steps, your observer may well reciprocate. Once there taking similar notes, you will see a number of valuable teaching strategies to try. Observing and discussing teaching with colleagues also quickly develops and extends collegial feelings between faculty and/or TAs inside and outside your department. If you can be observed by a supportive senior colleague, the ensuing dialogue about teaching can help develop a beneficial mentoring relationship.

Consulting with TRC Staff

The Teaching Resource Center exists to help individual faculty members and teaching assistants teach as effectively as they can. All consultations with TRC staff are confidential and available only upon request from individuals. You can call or e-mail the TRC (982- 2815, trc-uva@virginia.edu) to request an in-class observation or videotaping. From then on, the procedure follows the interview, evidence-gathering, analysis, and evaluation stages explained above; TRC staff members emphasize what you want to discover about your teaching, although we can offer general reactions and suggestions if you like.
With videotape, what an in-class observer might have noted likely appears on screen, and you can more easily analyze your own teaching. The TRC has camcorders, blank videotapes, and staff members to videotape your class; if you wish, you may keep a copy of your tape or use your own tape for the original. (For more details, see Videotape Analysis)

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

 —John Ruskin, Modern Painters,
                                                                   vol. I, pt. I, ch. 2, 1843