Overview
Teaching online is demanding work, and finding time to step back and reflect on your practice is not always easy. The Annual Faculty Reflection gives you a structured way to do that once a year. It is a brief online form that invites you to think about what is going well in your teaching, what challenges you have navigated, and where you want to grow. Your responses help shape the professional development opportunities CCO offers and can serve as a starting point for conversation with your Program Director.
Completing the Annual Faculty Reflection also fulfills your adjunct contract requirement to be available for professional development and other program-related activities each semester.
Purpose
This reflection is designed to help you identify your own strengths, name your own goals, and connect your teaching experience to meaningful next steps. Your information also serves as a resource for CCO to identify faculty with unique skills for participation in unique employment opportunities or receive special recognition.
Expectations
You are asked to complete the Annual Faculty Reflection each year. There is no single “schedule” since CCO faculty are all on such varied teaching schedules. Instead, you should begin your own individual annual cycle by simply completing an initial Annual Faculty Reflection and then completing it again at the same time each year.
Performance Evaluation
In addition to your professional development, the Annual Faculty Reflection is an important part of assessing your performance as an educator by documenting all steps that you are taking to improve students’ learning. This supplements all current methods of performance measurement such as students’ course evaluations or e-Learning’s metrics of faculty engagement (class attendance, etc.). Like any self-directed professional development process, the annual reflection puts improvement of your teaching performance in your hands as you define your own goals and methods of improvement that best fit your teaching style and the courses you teach.
Process
Your Annual Faculty Reflection is completed through an online form and should take approximately 20 minutes. There is no single annual schedule since CCO faculty teach on such varied timelines. You are encouraged to set your own cycle, completing the form once a year at a time that makes sense for you. Once you have completed your reflection, you can reach out to your Program Director to schedule a conversation, or wait for them to follow up with you.
ON HOLD! Annual Faculty Reflection Form
Reflection Questions
Below is an overview of the reflection questions and what each one is designed to surface:
- Name and Program Director. These are collected at the start so your reflection can be connected to the right people. If you teach in more than one program, you can select multiple Program Directors.
- Courses taught. List the courses you have taught in the past year. Include course name(s), number(s), and term(s). The easiest way to find these is to review your most recent courses in Canvas.
- Teaching highlights. Reflect on the courses you taught this academic year. What highlights from your teaching successes would you like to build on in the coming year? This is the question that we all need to ask more. Certainly, there were moments of success and interactions with students that could serve as an opportunity on which to build going forward. Said another way, can you point to strengths in your approach to teaching that you want to build on?
- Challenges and responses. As you consider the teaching you did in CCO during this past year, did you encounter any challenges? This is an opportunity to think broadly about any challenges or critical incidents, however big or small, and how you navigated these challenges. No course is 100% smooth sailing and looking for those challenging moments may lead to identifying opportunities for change in teaching, the course itself, CCO’s support systems, or all of the above.
- Development goals. CCO encourages our instructors to be lifelong learners and continue to develop additional expertise in teaching and learning. Did you have development goals last year that you hope to address this year? Please include specific activities and dates. This question really opens the door to your professional development in both your field of expertise AND teaching. Both of these are considered faculty development.
Performance Evaluation
The Annual Faculty Reflection is also one component of your overall performance as an educator at CCO. Documenting the steps you are taking to grow as a teacher complements other measures of faculty performance, including student course evaluations and eLearning’s engagement metrics. The reflection puts that work in your hands, giving you the opportunity to define goals and approaches that fit your teaching style and the courses you teach.
Questions?
Feel free to reach out to Phylise Banner, Director of eLearning.