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Savilla I Banister, PhD Promotion Review
Focus on Teaching
The School of Teaching and Learning, within the College of Education and Human Development, specifies that a tenured faculty member allocate 30% of his/her effort to scholarship, 50% to teaching and 20% to professional service. This allocation highlights our commitment to quality teaching in our unit, and the expectation that we, as faculty members, are modeling best practices in the teaching profession for our students. The typical teaching load for STL faculty members is 3-3.
In my teaching efforts, I have continued to focus on the qualities of rigor, relevance and relationship as guiding principles of my teaching philosophy. (Daggett, 2009) Student comments from course evaluations over the past six years speak to these qualities evidenced in my classes. (Artifact 1, section 2) In the area of rigor, students note that I communicate high expectations and that I encourage quality academic work. Students recognize the relevance of my courses, citing the applicability of the knowledge they glean to their profession. Finally, students affirm that relationships (student-teacher and student-student) are fostered in my classes via timely feedback, multiple resources for communication, and passionate engagement with the course content. The following paragraphs further describe the evidentiary support indicating that I am an exemplary teacher leader in the area of classroom technologies and 21st century education.
As my vita details, I have migrated from undergraduate to graduate teaching over the past seven years, leading the collaborative effort to redesign the Curriculum & Teaching Masters program and the Classroom Technology Masters program in 2008 and 2009, respectively. All the courses in these programs were substantively restructured to align with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and the National Educational Technology Standards for Teacher Coaches (NETS-C). In addition, all the courses in both graduate programs were redesigned for online delivery, allowing students to complete their degrees at a distance. In 2011, our online masters degrees in education received national recognition in the US News & World Report rankings (Artifact 3). I believe this ranking reflects the efforts I, and my STL colleagues, have made to deliver rigorous, high-quality graduate courses online.
As a part of my work with these graduate programs, I have been coordinator for both, currently working as the coordinator for the classroom technology graduate programs (masters and certificate). I have received a course release each semester to complete the work of program coordinator, reducing my teaching load to two-two for the fall and spring semesters. In addition, I received course releases for grant project work in spring semesters, 2008-2010. My teaching evaluation data (Artifact 1) reflects this load. I have chosen to include my summer teaching evaluations, as our graduate students actually take most of their coursework in the summer, and I believe that quality summer teaching is integral to our success. As the data indicate, my students affirm that my teaching is exemplary, with an overall mean of 3.66 on a 4-point scale. The quantitative data specify that students agree/strongly agree that I am prepared (3.76), knowledgeable (3.81), enthusiastic (3.78) and encourage student involvement (3.76), among other indicators, consistently. These “means of the means” from 2006-2011 course evaluations are above the school means of 3,67, 3.72, 3.68 and 3.65, respectively. My online students have completed the STL course evaluation form since 2004, so the same items and scales apply throughout 2011. In 2012, my students used the college online course evaluation, as it was being piloted. This instrument is on a 5-point scale, and my mean for spring, 2012, was 4.48.
Because I am committed to innovative teaching and learning that utilizes the digital technologies now available to educators, I continually integrate various technology resources to support learning outcomes. Some of the tools I currently use are VoiceThread, Skype, Google Docs, ScreenFlow, TodaysMeet, TexttheMob, Twitter, JING, Prezi, GoAnimate, NING, BlackBoard Collaborate, and Google Hangout. I also use various devices (smartphones, digital tablets, classroom response systems) and the applications available for these, to craft relevant educational experiences for my students. I take time to mentor my colleagues in the use of these resources, as well. Dr. Jodi Haney, Dr. Terry Herman and Dr. Kristine Blair have conducted virtual peer reviews my classes during the 2011-2012 academic year and written letters of observation and critique (Artifact 2). I am honored to have their feedback and encouraged that they find my teaching innovative and focused on student learning.
Because of my commitment to rigor in my teaching, I have adopted the Quality Matters framework to guide the design of all the online courses in the classroom technology graduate programs. “Quality Matters (QM) is a faculty-centered, peer review process that is designed to certify the quality of online and blended courses. QM is a leader in quality assurance for online education and has received national recognition for its peer-based approach and continuous improvement in online education and student learning.” (http://www.qmprogram.org/) Dr. Herman’s review of my EDTL 6320, Technology Leadership and Professional Development, course uses the QM rubric as a structure for her comments (Artifact 2). Besides using the QM guidelines for our BGSU courses, I have served as a QM reviewer for online courses across the nation and am currently a QM Master Reviewer, leading collaborative review teams in the QM process for online courses. This work demonstrates my expertise as a leader in rigorous, online university education.
In the national arena, I have designed and written a graduate curriculum course for Pearson’s Course Connect, blending my passions for the fields of curriculum studies and multimedia technologies (Artifact 4). This work, completed in the spring of 2012, affirms that national and international audiences value my talents as an instructional designer, as the Course Connect materials are distributed worldwide, through a range of colleges and universities. (http://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/courseconnect/)
Building a community of learners in our online graduate programs has been a key focus for me, as we have been exploring the world of the cyber campus. To that end, I have led the development of multiple venues that provide spaces for students to connect with faculty and each other in the virtual world. The Classroom Technology Community BlackBoard shell, as well as our wiki and Facebook spaces, nurture communication and collaboration that extend beyond student coursework. (Artifact 5) I have designed and delivered multiple webinars for students, focusing on areas of interest such as program orientation and masters project expectations, as well as timely topics including The Flipped Classroom and TPACK (technological, pedagogical content knowledge). I frequently use Skype or Google Hangout to meet virtually with students, and believe that our online programs model excellent strategies of engagement with students. The invitation to deliver the keynote address for Lourdes University’s Share Conference, focused on student engagement, provides further evidence of my dedication to building strong relationships with students.
I have enjoyed the metamorphosis of my teaching career, as I have grown to design and direct full programs, teach online, and create online resources for student engagement. While I occasionally am privileged to teach a face-to-face workshop or class session, I am fairly consumed by the virtual university and find it thrilling. I continue to seek out new tools and strategies to support student learning and faculty growth in this venue. I am honored and excited to continue on this journey.
Artifact 1-Course evaluations, 2006-2012, quantitative and qualitative
Artifact 2-Course observation letters (Haney, Herman, Blair)
Artifact 3-Redesign of Classroom Technology Graduate Programs (2009)
Artifact 4-Course Connect Pearson Curriculum Course for online delivery
Artifact 5-BlackBoard Community Shell for Online Graduate Students
Daggett, B. (2009). Relevance, rigor and relationships: Bill Daggett's three R's for American schools. Educator(Fall), 4-9.