Print View
l From the Noteworthy column in the November 2001 Perspectives
Toward Transparency in Teaching: Publishing a Course Portfolio
By T. Mills Kelly
Editor's Note: The following essay appears in conjunction
with the launch of the web pages devoted to an AHA project—funded by the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching—aimed at presenting
an online resource for teaching that focuses on history course portfolios.
During the 1999–2000 academic year I devoted a large part of my research
energy to an attempt to understand better what happens when we introduce hypermedia
into an introductory history survey course. How do new media change student
understanding of course content? Do hypermedia improve or detract from students'
ability to acquire a greater facility with historical methods? Might using hypermedia
in a survey course give students new or different insights into something we
like to call "historical thinking"?
All of these questions had been vexing me for some time and with support from
the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching I was able to focus
my efforts on one course—Western Civilization—that I taught at Texas
Tech University, my former employer. The results of my project have now been
mounted on the AHA web site alongside the work of Temple University historian
Bill Cutler as part of the Association's portfolio project funded by the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.1
When I began the project, my intent was to disseminate any interesting results
in conventional ways—articles in journals, conference papers—and I
have done that.2 In addition, my experiences as a Carnegie fellow
introduced me to the emerging scholarly genre that currently goes under the
name Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.3 Those who promote and
participate in this genre insist that if our work is ever to be considered "scholarship"
then it has to meet all the standards we apply to scholarship in our own fields.
Some of the most important characteristics of scholarship are that it is research-based,
that it is peer reviewed, and that it is disseminated to an audience that has
the opportunity to comment upon it or build upon it.
In addition to the more common products of research on what happens in the
classroom, such as journal articles or conference papers, many engaged in the
scholarship of teaching and learning are using course portfolios as a means
for obtaining critical comment on their research in its early stages, presenting
their work to a wider audience, and ultimately publishing some sort of final
product that enters the literature in their field. Course portfolios now come
in a variety of shapes and sizes and to date there is no agreement on just what
a portfolio ought to include or exclude, nor on the best means for disseminating
the portfolio. There is even debate on whether it ought to be disseminated beyond
the confines of one's department or campus, although one cannot reasonably claim
that a portfolio is a form of scholarship and still seek to limit its distribution
only to a small circle of colleagues.4
In my own case, once I decided to create a portfolio as one strategy for presenting
my research to a broader audience, it was only natural it should be a hypermedia
document. After all, my research was all about hypermedia, so to create something
in print seemed contradictory. Because there is no consensus about what a portfolio
ought to include and what it ought to look like, I was free to shape mine as
I saw fit. That's the good news. The bad news is that I had to make all my own
decisions about my portfolio's content and its presentation—I had no style
sheet to work from.
A second dilemma I faced was how much information to include in the portfolio.
Historians are a skeptical tribe, often more interested in what we do not
find in the archive than in what we actually find. For this reason, I knew that
if my colleagues were going to consider my research worthy of further consideration,
I would have to provide them with as much of my research as possible without
cramming several hundred pages of text into the site. Hypermedia are a big help
where this problem is concerned, because it is possible for the reader to move
easily within various portions of a site pursuing his or her own line of inquiry.
Visitors to my portfolio can read it either as a linear text or as a hypertext
and can view everything—from samples of my students' essays to my student
and peer evaluations and my own conclusions about the research.
Perhaps the most daunting issue I faced during the creation of this course
portfolio was the question of transparency. My decision to open up my classroom
to the scrutiny of an audience of anyone with a web browser entailed certain
risks. Teaching is normally a very private activity, closed off from our peers
by the four walls of our classrooms, but also often jealously guarded behind
the walls of academic freedom. A portfolio like mine tears down those walls
and invites the entire world to pass judgment on my teaching. For my own reasons
and in my own professional context, I found complete transparency desirable.
Because this level of disclosure is not feasible in all professional situations,
I do not propose that all portfolios should be as extensive as mine or that
they must be on the web.
Some of the most intense debates I have had with colleagues, both here and
in Europe, about the portfolio have centered on the issue of transparency. Reactions
have ranged from outright anger, to skepticism, to approval. In almost every
case, the more emotional the response, the more likely it is that the person
responding is in a department where transparency about one's teaching can be
dangerous to his or her future prospects. Every single one of the dozens and
dozens of historians with whom I have discussed the portfolio has touched on
this subject, with almost every one expressing at least some anxiety about the
level of disclosure. The consistency of their responses to my work leads me
to ask, what sort of environment have we created in our departments where transparent
teaching can produce so much anxiety?
If the scholarship of teaching and learning is to ever take root in history
departments, this seemingly widespread anxiety about transparent teaching will
need to be addressed. The scholarship of teaching and learning centers on scholars
in the disciplines—as opposed to educational researchers—trying to
make sense of what is happening (or not happening) in their classrooms. If what
happens in those classrooms cannot be opened up for critical evaluation, in
the same way that we open our scholarship up to critical evaluation, then we
cannot expect to make much progress on the questions that often vex us the most
in our daily lives. After all, even at "research" departments, faculty devote
a substantial portion, if not the majority of their week, to teaching and teaching-related
activities, and most of our commiseration at conferences and over lunch is about
what is or isn't happening in our classrooms. Thus, I would submit that we must
find new ways to talk about teaching and the course portfolio offers one such
vehicle for beginning conversations that are research-based rather than based
upon charming anecdotes.
For anyone interested in creating a course portfolio, I would offer the advice
that there is truly no right or wrong way to engage in this enterprise. I have
read portfolios that are no more than 6 or 7 pages and others that run well
beyond 100 pages in length. Some are narratives of a semester, while others
eschew narrative for close analysis of a particular problem or set of data.
What distinguishes a course portfolio from a teaching portfolio, however, is
that while a teaching portfolio is a means for representing the range of one's
teaching practice, a course portfolio is a vehicle for representing the results
of a scholarly investigation of teaching and learning. Hold yourself to the
same standards of research that you would expect in your regular research and
the portfolio you create will be something you can show others with pride.
—T. Mills Kelly is an assistant professor in the department
of history and art history at George Mason University, where he is also coordinator
of the Western Civilization program and director for educational projects in
the Center for History and New Media. He is currently writing a monograph on
the origins of radical nationalism in East Central Europe.
Notes
1. Details at http://www.theaha.org/teaching/aahe/aahecover.html
2. The results of this project appeared in the Journal of the Association
for History and Computing III/2 (August 2000), http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCIII2/ARTICLES/kelly/kelly.html
3. On the development of the scholarship of teaching and learning in history
see, Lendol Calder, William Cutler, and T. Mills Kelly, "History Lessons: Historians
and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning," in Mary Huber and Sherry Moreale
eds., Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
(American Association for Higher Education, forthcoming December 2001).
4. See Pat Hutchings, ed. The Course Portfolio: How Faculty Can Examine
Their Teaching to Advance Practice and Improve Student Learning. (American
Association for Higher Education: 1998).
Copyright © American Historical Association.
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2001/0111/0111not1.cfm on December 29, 2006
|