Faculty-led Inquiry into Reflective and Scholarly Teaching (FIRST)
Date of this Version
2018
Document Type
Portfolio
Citation
De Almeida, Catherine. "A Peer Review of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio: LARC 497/597: Waste Ecologies" (2018). UNL Faculty Portfolios. 121. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/prtunl/121/
Abstract
This teaching portfolio presents a summary of my teaching efforts, course objectives, outcomes, and student learning for the first offering of the course LARC 497/597: Waste Ecologies. As a new professional elective course open to all upper level undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Spring 2018, participating in the Peer Review of Teaching program enabled me to develop the course through backwards design by matching course objectives with specific assignments and exercises that tracked student learning. Although this marked the first time teaching this course, it integrates my research trajectory of designing with waste. The Peer Review of Teaching program provided the venue and opportunity to critically reflect on course objectives, course activities and assignments, and develop and apply methods for students assessment and techniques for documentating student learning. My primary objective for participating in the program was to receive peer feedback on the clarity of the course, its delivery and structure, and strategies for assessing and documenting student learning, providing the support necessary to develop this new course. This portfolio documents the course objectives and structure, my teaching methods, assignments and their rationales, assessment methods, and selected student work, which is analyzed relative to the achievement of learning outcomes and course objectives. It also provides a critical reflection of potential planned changes for the next offering based on this analysis, documentation, and feedback.