Teaching Portfolio and Teaching Evaluations

[dbdavis]

I was wondering how important the teaching evaluations you get from undergrads in the sections you TA are to a teaching portfolio. My evals aren't bad, they just aren't good either. In terms of scores on various questions I've been scoring a bit below the department average for all classes. How much do schools care about getting a 4.0/5 on a Likert scale when the average is 4.2/5? What does matter most in terms of teaching portfolios?

[maxhgns]

Although some people like to talk about the importance of teaching, the reality is that teaching is mostly irrelevant when it comes to hiring. What matters is that you're competent, and present competently. Even at teaching-centred institutions. Part of the reason for this is that nobody teaches us to teach, and we just have to sink or swim on our own. Don't worry about falling a couple of tenths of a whole number below the departmental average. Everyone gets some bad reviews, and that's not even a bad score. Plus, we all know that teaching evaluations are mostly BS. 

You should worry when you start consistently getting 1s, 2s, or 3s out of 5, and everyone else is consistently getting 4s. The goal here is simply not to raise any red flags, not to astound everyone with  Forget about the evaluations. Focus instead on your teaching statement, on developing your syllabi, and on answering questions about your teaching.

Your teaching portfolio is going to be a very large document (mine is about 100 pages), since you have to include so many different things in it. Nobody will read it all. At best, everyone on the committee will read your teaching statement, make sure your evaluations aren't disastrous, and then glance at a syllabus that catches their fancy. And, with that in mind, make sure you include a table of contents so that they don't have to flounder around.

[rising_star]

Schools will often ask you to submit your evals but I doubt anyone is going to care that you're 0.2 off the average, especially given all the known flaws in student evaluations. 

Also, @maxhgns, I would never submit a teaching portfolio that long with a job application. I've been teaching full-time for 4 years and mine is less than half that. If an applicant submitted something that long to me, I'd probably never make it past the first paragraph out of sheer irritation.

[maxhgns]

4 hours ago, rising_star said:

Schools will often ask you to submit your evals but I doubt anyone is going to care that you're 0.2 off the average, especially given all the known flaws in student evaluations. 

Also, @maxhgns, I would never submit a teaching portfolio that long with a job application. I've been teaching full-time for 4 years and mine is less than half that. If an applicant submitted something that long to me, I'd probably never make it past the first paragraph out of sheer irritation.

Maybe it's down to disciplinary differences. We usually have to submit a teaching statement, diversity statement, syllabi for courses taught, syllabi for proposed courses, sample assignments, and sample course evaluations (unedited and with comments). All that quickly adds up to 50-100 pages. It's the unedited and complete course evaluations that take up the most space, since a single course can easily eat up ten pages. That's why the table of contents is so important (and a one-page summary of the course evaluations is a good idea, too).

(I did exaggerate, though; mine comes in at 80 pages. But still. It's silly, because nobody is ever going to read it all. But that's what everyone asks for, and sending a 10-20 page dossier will get you cut.)

[rising_star]

10 hours ago, maxhgns said:

Maybe it's down to disciplinary differences. We usually have to submit a teaching statement, diversity statement, syllabi for courses taught, syllabi for proposed courses, sample assignments, and sample course evaluations (unedited and with comments). All that quickly adds up to 50-100 pages. It's the unedited and complete course evaluations that take up the most space, since a single course can easily eat up ten pages. That's why the table of contents is so important (and a one-page summary of the course evaluations is a good idea, too).

Maybe? I straddle three interdisciplinary fields. We NEVER ask for syllabi for all courses taught or sample assignments.* I have seen schools ask for a diversity statement but this shouldn't be more than 1-2 pages of your packet. Same for the teaching statement. And course evaluations should never be sent unedited. You want to lay out the information in a way that makes it easy on the reader who has hundreds of applications to review and sending every narrative comment you've ever received ultimately isn't that helpful.

Like I said before, my teaching portfolio isn't that long (I think under 20 pages) because I know people aren't going to read more and I offer to send additional things at their request. I include one sample syllabus and it's linked to things I talk about in my teaching statement. I talk about the kinds of assignments in my teaching statement but these are only available by request because, quite frankly, they're only somewhat illuminating without the broader context (e.g., I have five linked assignments in one course which slowly build the skills needed to do an in-depth research paper but, realistically, no one is going to read all five at the application stage).

I guess the moral of this is that people should consult with those in their discipline. I would be aghast if someone sent an 80-100 page teaching portfolio with their application. I'd also wonder about why they thought to send all that, no matter how well organized it is.

*This is actually something that schools should be re-evaluating their practices around as it is another way of introducing bias and discrimination into the hiring process. Especially since few grad students have full control over how much or what they teach. But that's a rant for a different day. 

[maxhgns]

Oh, I didn't mean we have to send all our syllabi. But even if you send five, that's around ten pages. With the two statements, you're at twelve. Even with sample assignments, that only takes you to close to 20.

Like I said, it's the unedited evals that blow it up. I'd be happy to consolidate them down to size, but that's srrongly discouraged in my field. The best I can offer is a one-page summary before the raw evals.

[rising_star]

Your syllabi are only two pages, @maxhgns? WOW! Again, huge differences between fields. I think the shortest syllabus and schedule of readings I've ever put together was about 8 pages total. That may be a reason why no one ever expects you to send all of them. I also imagine that the ability to be choosier about what one includes comes as one advances in one's career. Early on, I could've easily sent all my syllabi. Now that I teach multiple courses per semester, that would be overload if I were to send that to anyone.

[maxhgns]

6 hours ago, rising_star said:

Your syllabi are only two pages, @maxhgns? WOW! Again, huge differences between fields. I think the shortest syllabus and schedule of readings I've ever put together was about 8 pages total. That may be a reason why no one ever expects you to send all of them. I also imagine that the ability to be choosier about what one includes comes as one advances in one's career. Early on, I could've easily sent all my syllabi. Now that I teach multiple courses per semester, that would be overload if I were to send that to anyone.

My full syllabi are much longer, because of all the boilerplate language, course policies and evaluation brreakdown, etc. Like yours, they tend to be 7ish pages.

But I only present one of those in my teaching portfolio, and the rest are all just the course description plus schedule of readings and assignments (usually two pages, sometimes three). Gotta save space where I can!

(I should say, for the record, that all of my interviews so far have been at SLACs. So I'm not likely to be a total weirdo when it comes to how I put the portfolio together!)

[rising_star]

23 hours ago, maxhgns said:

(I should say, for the record, that all of my interviews so far have been at SLACs. So I'm not likely to be a total weirdo when it comes to how I put the portfolio together!)

Ummm... I teach at a SLAC and my last job was at one as well. At least in my fields, your portfolio would still be considered way too long/in depth for anyone to even try to get through.

[maxhgns]

3 hours ago, rising_star said:

Ummm... I teach at a SLAC and my last job was at one as well. At least in my fields, your portfolio would still be considered way too long/in depth for anyone to even try to get through.

All I meant was that given that the advice we're given (in my field) is as I've related it, and that I'm getting interviews at teaching-focused schools, I'm at least reasonably confident that my portfolio is normal for the field, if not more generally.

Edit: That said, I might just try to pare it down a fair bit, and see if I have any more luck next year. I suppose I could offer a summary of the eval comments after the numerical summary, link to the unedited evals, and just include one or two complete, unedited sets. That could work. I'd certainly prefer a shorter document, because it's a pain in the ass to change.

Edited February 23, 2018 by maxhgns