Tools and Resources

This list of inclusive teaching strategies was created as part of the Schreyer Institute's Creating Inclusive Courses workshop. The workshop activity is also available in this repository. The list was compiled over many years and is intended to help instructors recognize what they might already be doing to demonstrate that all students are welcome contributors to the course learning community. This is not a "checklist." Creating inclusive course environments requires sincerity, intentionality, and reflection, not simply enacting a list of strategies. These strategies are most effective when combined with other efforts such as critical self-reflection reflection, learning about antiracist pedagogies, and taking steps to decolonize our classrooms.

We use this handout in our inclusive teaching workshop. It is adapted from “Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom” by Lee Warren at Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. It includes suggestions about how to manage difficult conversations by planning before the course as well ideas for what to do during the course ("in the moment").

Professor Christine Hockings (UK), April 2010
Inclusive learning and teaching in higher education refers to the ways in which pedagogy, curricula and assessment are designed and delivered to engage students in learning that is meaningful, relevant and accessible to all. It embraces a view of the individual and individual difference as the source of diversity that can enrich the lives and learning of others.
This publication includes summaries of key research on how inclusion practices impact students' learning, identities, and belonging.

This is a workshop activity used in our Inclusive Courses workshop. It is intended to help instructors to recognize the wide range of things that they currently do, or can do, to demonstrate to students that each has unique contributions to make in the course learning community.

Tasha Souza developed this communication framework as an interactive response so that instructors can have response strategies they can activate in critical moments to maintain inclusive teaching environments. Having language/phrases that we can see ourselves use, can be a critical step in our immediate responses to microaggression and an important action to take to support those who have been targeted by a microaggression.

Inclusive Teaching. This document includes the slides and handouts used in Linse & Weinstein's workshop introducing faculty to specific actions that they can take immediately to make their courses more inclusive. Based on our experience, it is best to provide the Strategies early in the workshop because it addresses faculty members' primary concern--what to do! By addressing faculty needs first, we have found it allows us to have richer discussions about the two most intractable issues to creating inclusive learning environments, Microaggressions and Stereotype Threat.

This document provides suggestions for thinking about addressing diversity in the classroom and incorporating those thoughts into your teaching portfolio.

Making the Right Impressions on the First Day of Class
What can be done then to make a positive first impression in the classroom? In a study
(Hayward, 2001) where students were given a survey after the first class meeting, factors
contributing to positive perceptions of teaching effectiveness were identified.
The power of knowing, in the first two seconds, is our ability to make quick judgments. Think back to when you were in school and how long did it take you to size up a professor? Did you know the first day how good a teacher was, or did it take several classes or the entire semester? Research has found that students watching a silent two-second video clip of a teacher they have never met reach very similar conclusions about that teacher’s effectiveness when compared to students who have sat in the teacher’s class for a semester.
Students have been found to quickly size up a professor on these four factors:

This is a one-page tip sheet that guides instructors in thinking about instruction beyond just covering content.

This is a one-page tip sheet that guides instructors in thinking about how to "decode" their discipline for students and to strategize ways to help students navigate the challenges of learning in the discipline.

This one-page tip sheet provides background and approaches to guide instructors in directing students toward mastery of content.

This one-page tip sheet discusses the idea of "differentiated instruction" and suggests ways instructors can differentiate their own instruction with respect to content, processes, and products.

This one-page tip sheet guides instructors through evidence-based components of an effective lesson plan.

Rubric used to evaluated teaching grant proposals.

Fern K. Willits and Mark A. Brennan 2016 Changing Perceptions of the University as a Community of Learning: The Case of Penn State. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 28(1), 66-74.
Supported by a grant from the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence

Created for faculty and other academics who are interested in getting involved in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Recommended resources include the following topics: "Preparing to do SOTL," "Books on SOTL Research," "Journals for Educational Research," and "Videos of SoTL researchers discussing different aspects of SOTL."

The Lecture/Discussion Facilitation Template was distributed at the 2017 Lilly Evidence-based Teaching & Learning Conference held in Bethesda, MD June 1 - 4, 2017. Use it during lectures as a low-stakes, largely anonymous method to gauge students’ understanding, as a pop quiz or survey, or to keep track of in-class group activities. The template can improve student participation and engagement by minimizing their fears of low (or even “too high”) performance before their classmates, and it provides a demonstrable, observable, measurable, and active way to gain a sense of how well students are “getting it,” beyond the glint in their eyes. In that sense, it serves as a quick formative assessment tool that can be customized on demand.

Student ratings are not the only option to provide evidence in the evaluation of teaching. There is a broad range of alternatives to consider beyond student ratings in the delicate decision-making processes to improve teaching and determine the promotion and tenure of faculty. Yet, despite the constant barrage of attacks on the integrity, reliability, and validity of student ratings, their use in higher education is at an all-time high.
So what do student ratings actually contribute to decisions about teaching and faculty? Should they be abandoned? Should you focus on the other options? This article examines student ratings and 14 alternatives to guide your plans to evaluate teaching in your department.

This webpage lists many resources to help faculty work with diverse students, including strategies for working with specific minority groups, such as students with disabilities. The resources are related to diversity and inclusion.

Strategies for adapting face-to-face teaching for online, flexible, or mixed-mode learning environments. This document was offered as a web resource for faculty teaching online, flexible, or mixed-mode courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is available here for archival purposes.

Strategies for adapting face-to-face teaching and assessments for online, flexible, or mixed-mode learning environments. This document was offered as a web resource for faculty teaching online, flexible, or mixed-mode courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is available here for archival purposes.

Strategies for adapting face-to-face assessments for online, flexible, or mixed-mode learning environments. This document was offered as a web resource for faculty teaching online, flexible, or mixed-mode courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is available here for archival purposes.

Statement of Practices for the Evaluation of Teaching Effectiveness for Promotion and Tenure
This document was created by the University Faculty Senate as an Advisory and Consultative report on April 30, 1985. The Statement of Practices was revised by the faculty senate on February 21, 1989, and again on September 16, 2003. This statement was extracted from Appendix A of the 2021-2022 Administrative Guidelines for Policy AC23 (formerly HR23): Promotion and Tenure Procedures and Regulations 2021-2022.

The purpose of this document is to provide information for instructors who are concerned about how to handle election-related student comments and questions. The pre-election information below provides information about how to respond to student questions about voting, as well as relevant Penn State policies. The post-election section includes information about what you might consider as you plan for your course sessions that occur immediately after the election. Some of the resources were developed for the 2020 election but are still useful for this election.

The purpose of this article is to provide a process for centers for teaching and learning to demonstrate their success and their value to constituents. Faculty developers have long requested an approach that would guide relevant and meaningful data collection. Nearly every CTL must develop a strategic plan, but too often they sit on a shelf gathering dust. The purpose of a strategic plan is to guide decision-making about how the unit spends its resources in service of its purpose (mission).
Linse, A. R. & Hood, L. N. (in press). Building a strategic plan that guides assessment: A case study from a teaching and learning center. Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning.

This is a 2-page flyer provided by the CIRTL Network (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning). It includes quotes from participants about how participating benefitted them. Many are now professors. The second page is focuses on additional benefits for students, faculty, and academic units.

This resource was designed to help UBC instructors self-assess their teaching dossier (portfolio) and reflect on its content. It can be used alongside the detailed information in the Teaching Portfolio section at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, University of British Columbia.

Handout contains prompts for reflecting on one's syllabus, a class, an assignment, and student learning. Reflective prompts that support brainstorming ideas for the portfolio support the early stages of the development of a teaching portfolio.

An overview of the components of a teaching portfolio based on the administrative guidelines for AC 23 at Penn State. The document describes the each component its function and includes examples from various portfolios.

Addresses common challenges instructors might face when creating a teaching portfolio. Offers how-to suggestions for getting started with the development of a teaching portfolio.

Considerations for using AI (artificial intelligence) tools in our teaching: when planning a course, when planning an assignment, when considering implications for equity, accessibility and academic integrity.

Questions and advice to guide pre- and post-observation conversations for faculty peer review of teaching. These questions can also be used to guide a written observation summary letter.

Penn State’s Faculty Assessment of Teaching Framework assesses teaching using evidence from three sources, peer review, self-assessment, and student feedback. The framework also identifies four Elements of Effective Teaching, which provide a foundation of understanding, advance a shared language for communication, and serve as standards against which the combined sources of evidence are judged. Academic units may also use the elements as an invitation to discuss other important aspects of effective teaching. This document includes teaching examples by element.

This is a quick start guide for engaging in self reflection on teaching. It can be helpful to support the production of the reflection portion of the dossier for P&T and/or annual review for Penn State faculty.

All instructors will need to address a course disruption at some point in their teaching career. When instructors do not have response strategies that can be activated in that moment, it can lead to undermine student confidence in you and may send the wrong message to those who have been targeted. The phrases below can be adapted so that you are prepared to use them. Developed by Tasha Souza, Ph.D., Director of the BUILD Program at Boise State University, developed this interactive communication framework for instructors to use in the immediate moment.

A teaching philosophy is more than an instructor’s beliefs about teaching and learning and paints a picture of what it is like to be a student in the course. It explains why a faculty member does what they do in their courses. It can be a foundational document for course design, narrative statements, and self-reflection.

A teaching philosophy is typically a 1-2-page narrative. It describes how learning happens in a course through examples learning activities, instructor- and student-student interactions, assessments. See Writing a Teaching Philosophy.

This resource offers principles of trauma-informed teaching and recommendations instructors
might consider as they are developing trauma-informed practices for their own courses.

Students may bring their thoughts and feelings as well as their trauma related to the violence and humanitarian crisis of the Israel-Gaza conflict into your course, even if your course material is not related to current events. This resource describes actions you can take for your students (and yourself) as well as Trauma Informed Pedagogy.

Research suggests that the tone of the syllabus communicates an instructor’s teaching philosophy and how the instructor communicates with students (Boysen et al, 2015). Additionally, the tone of the syllabus evokes perceptions of the instructor being warm, approachable, and motivating for learners (Harnish & Bridges, 2011; Wheeler, 2019).

The purpose of this activity is for participants or students to get to know each other as individuals with distinct histories, backgrounds, and traditions. Knowing something personal about others helps learning communities and teams function more effectively.

The Where I'm From icebreaker activity was developed based on a poem by George Ella Lyon (http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html). This teaching activity is described in: Christensen, Linda (1998) Inviting Student Lives into the Classroom: Where I'm From. Rethinking Schools, 12(2): 22-23. Available on-line at: https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/where-i-m-from/

Large classes are among the most important because many students enrolled are new to the college experience. The big challenges of teaching large classes include finding ways to engage students, providing timely feedback, and managing logistics. When faced with these challenges, many instructors revert to lectures and multiple-choice tests. There are alternatives. This special report describes some alternative teaching and course management techniques to get students actively involved without an inordinate amount of work on the instructor’s part. From the Teaching Professor, Magna.

Active Learning, Strategies for Success is written for instructors who are not practiced at teaching actively. It was created after hearing from faculty "That active learning stuff doesn't work for me. I tried it and the students hated it!" Following a 4-step process can help ensure that your early attempts at active teaching are more successful. These steps have been used by hundreds of faculty to effectively introduce students to active learning. For suggestions of activities look for "Interactive Learning" in the repository search box.

This resource is from Texas Tech University and is written by Jenny Lloyd-Strovas, Ph.D. at TTU's Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center
Texas Tech University in August, 2015.
Teaching large classes can be a daunting experience. How do you keep students engaged and active without losing control of the classroom? With so many students, how do you know if they are learning? Should you attempt to take attendance or risk losing students? How do you build rapport when learning 200 names isn’t a possibility? If you have taught (or are preparing to teach) a large class, you have probably asked yourself these questions. Here, I will discuss possible solutions for these challenges and more. This resource is organized to be a quick and efficient reference for challenges that you are experiencing in your classroom.

Abstract: Writing multiple-choice test items to measure student learning in higher education is a challenge. Based on extensive scholarly research and experience, the author describes various item formats, offers guidelines for creating these items, and provides many examples of both good and bad test items. He also suggests some shortcuts for developing test items. All of this advice is based on extensive scholarly research and experience. Creating valid multiple-choice items is a difficult task, but it contributes greatly to the teaching and learning process for undergraduate, graduate, and professional-school courses.

Author: Thomas M. Haladyna, Arizona State University

Keywords: Multiple-choice items, selected response, test-item formats, examinations

Heavily abridged version of Weinstein, Y., Madan, C. R., & Smith, M. A. (in press). Teaching the science of learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, prepared for and presented at "Reframing Testing as a Learning Experience: Three Strategies for Use in the Classroom and at Home" on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017.

Six key learning strategies from research in cognitive psychology can be applied to education: spaced practice, interleaving, elaborative interrogation, concrete examples, dual coding, and retrieval practice. However, a recent report (Pomerance, Greenberg, & Walsh, 2016) found that few teacher-training textbooks cover these principles; current study-skills courses also lack coverage of these important learning strategies. Students are therefore missing out on mastering techniques they could use on their own to learn effectively. This handout contains the six key learning strategies to address those concerns.

This flyer lists a variety of services provided by our consultants divided into 5 broad categories: Course Design & Planning, Teaching Strategies, Testing & Grading, Reearch on Teaching & Learning, and Course Evaluation.

Faculty testimonials about reasons why other faculty might want to work with the faculty consultants at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, our teaching center.

Instructional Foundations is a series of workshops for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and instructors
from all disciplines who have never taught at the university level (grading experience OK) prior to Fall 2016. The
series is designed to provide people new to college teaching with knowledge, skills and confidence they can use in
their first teaching experience.

Everywhere you turn, colleagues are talking about evidence-based teaching. But even when
the evidence is convincing, it can be tough to choose a strategy and begin using it well. This
navigational guide will help you get started.
Horii, C. V. (2018) Wise Instructional Choices in an Evidence-driven Era. NEA Higher Education Advocate, 36(3), 6-9.

The Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, University of Calgary developed the Taylor Institute Guide on Teaching Dossiers (aka Teaching Portfolios) and Philosophy Statements. This guide is a comprehensive resource for creating a teaching dossier that presents an integrated summary of your teaching philosophy, approaches, accomplishments, and effectiveness. Based on a compilation of current scholarship and open access resources this guide uses a literature-informed framework for developing teaching expertise to lead you through a series of practical exercises to develop and strengthen your teaching dossier and philosophy.

All materials are licensed under the creative commons and we invite you to share, use and adapt this guide within your local contexts and/or educational development initiatives.

This paper outlines twelve tips for undertaking peer observation of teaching in medical education, using the peer review model and the experiences of the authors. An accurate understanding of teaching effectiveness is required by individuals, medical schools, and universities to evaluate the learning environment and to substantiate academic and institutional performance. Peer Observation of Teaching is one tool that provides rich, qualitative evidence for teachers, quite different from closed-ended student evaluations. When Peer Observation of Teaching is incorporated into university practice and culture, and is conducted in a mutually respectful and supportive way, it has the potential to facilitate reflective change and growth for teachers.

Learn more about faculty options for Teaching and Learning Scholarship (TLS) at Penn State. TLS is also known as Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and it forms the foundation for evidence-based teaching. This flyer outlines short term, medium range, and long term options for TLS support and resources. Contact information is included on the flyer.

This document shows how to add the Penn State "Teaching Events" calendar to your list of Outlook Calendars. Over 40 units at Penn State offer Teaching and Learning events, seminars, visiting speakers, workshops, short courses, etc. The calendar was created so all faculty and TAs can see what is happening around the university. Some events will be open only for targeted audiences, but others will be open to all. Before scheduling an event please ensure that other events with similar audiences are not already on the calendar!

This is a resource indicating technological tools to support teaching and learning at Penn State. This document contains a list of centrally supported tech, and also other that are not centrally supported but have wide support available online.

These PowerPoint slides accompanied a presentation by James M. Lang delivered at University Park on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. Research from the learning sciences and from a variety of educational settings suggests that a small number of key principles can improve learning in almost any type of college or university course, from traditional lectures to flipped classrooms. This workshop will introduce some of those principles, offer practical suggestions for how they might foster positive change in higher education teaching and learning, and guide faculty participants to consider how these principles might manifest themselves in their current and upcoming courses.

These PowerPoint slides accompanied a presentation by James M. Lang delivered at University Park on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. As faculty struggle with the problem of distracted students on our campuses and in our classes, they have become increasingly frustrated by the ways in which digital devices can interfere with student learning. But are students today more distracted than they were in the past? Has technology reduced their ability to focus and think deeply, as some popular books have argued? This interactive lecture draws upon scholarship from history, neuroscience, and education in order to provide productive new pathways for faculty to understand the distractible nature of the human brain, work with students to moderate the effects of distraction in their learning, and even leverage the distractible nature of our minds for new forms of connected and creative thinking.

This is the second report of the Committee on Assessing Teaching Effectiveness submitted to Kathy Bieschke, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. This report is recommends options for improving future evaluation of teaching for tenure, promotion, annual review, and reappointment. The committee's recommendations address the unacceptable over-reliance on student feedback in the process of evaluation--specifically the numerical ratings of the Student Ratings of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTE) and the ‘Open Ended Item’ responses, which serve to amplify systemic inequities and hierarchies within our teaching community. The first report of the committee provided recommendations for evaluating teaching for promotion & tenure during the pandemic of 2020.

This is the committee's second report [for Report 1, see Appendix M in the NEW: 2020-2021 Administrative Guidelines for Policy AC23 (formerly HR23): Promotion and Tenure Procedures and Regulations]

Teaching and Advising Resources for the Inauguration and Beyond
This document offers resources for creating a positive learning environment for all students and addressing challenges that might arise at the beginning of this semester. Main topics include: Checking in with Ourselves and Our Students; Engaging in Dialogue with Students; Managing Classroom Disruptions

Best Practices in the Evaluation of Teaching, by Stephen L. Benton, The IDEA Center and Suzanne Young, University of Wyoming
Effective instructor evaluation is complex and requires the use of multiple measures—formal and informal, traditional and authentic—as part of a balanced evaluation system. The student voice, a critical element of that balanced system, is appropriately complemented by instructor self-assessment and the reasoned judgments of other relevant parties, such as peers and supervisors. Integrating all three elements allows instructors to take a mastery approach to formative evaluation, trying out new teaching strategies and remaining open to feedback that focuses on how they might improve. Such feedback is most useful when it occurs in an environment that fosters challenge, support, and growth. Rather than being demoralized by their performance rankings, faculty can concentrate on their individual efforts and compare current progress to past performance. They can then concentrate on developing better teaching methods and skills rather than fearing or resenting comparisons to others. The evaluation of teaching thus becomes a rewarding process, not a dreaded event.
Keywords: Evaluation of teaching, summative evaluation, formative evaluation, mastery orientation

General recommendations for adapting teaching and assessment to a synchronous, remote course environment. This document was offered as page one of a web resource for faculty who transformed their courses from face-to-face to remote learning environments due to campus closures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is available here for archival purposes.

Strategies for adapting face-to-face teaching to a synchronous, remote course environment, arranged by some of the common course formats and course types. This document was offered as page two of a web resource for faculty who transformed their courses from face-to-face to remote learning environments due to campus closures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is available here for archival purposes.

Strategies for adapting face-to-face assessments to a synchronous, remote course environment, arranged by some of the common course formats and course types. This document was offered as page three of a web resource for faculty who transformed their courses from face-to-face to remote learning environments due to campus closures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is available here for archival purposes.

Resources for teaching writing-intensive courses or integrating writing into any course; source is the WAC (Writing across the Curriculum) Clearinghouse.

This article, from Stanford's teaching and learning center, addresses strategies for improving assessment and grading practices in the classroom.

Guidelines for a teaching philosophy.

How to write a teaching philosophy.

Rubric for a teaching philosophy.

Evaluating a teaching philosophy.

This document provides a tool for use in evaluating a teaching philosophy, or teaching statement, that might be included in a job application packet or a tenure and promotion dossier. The matrix includes evaluative criteria for: history/herstory; relation to course(s) and discipline; grounding in theory and/or experience; appropriateness of language to audience; organization and succinctness

Provides a tool for evaluating a teaching philosophy / teaching statement that might be included in a job application packet or a tenure and promotion dossier. Areas evaluated include format, clarity, specificity, degree of reflectiveness, and foundation in beliefs about teaching and learning.

Best practices for teaching assistants as they interact with students. Includes tips on creating rapport and establishing effective boundaries.

A teaching portfolio provides materials associated with the experience of teaching and learning. This PDF describes items that might be included in a teaching portfolio, categorized by source: personal material, material from others, and products of good teaching.

Teaching portfolios provide an opportunity for instructors to show evidence that they are effective teachers. This PDF includes a list of questions that can be useful in filtering the kinds of evidence to be included in one's portfolio.

One-page handout of information about the Schreyer Institute and Student Ratings of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTE)

This document contains a list of websites and other resources for faculty who teach in large classes.

This handout highlights some of the current research based strategies for teaching millennial students.

This file describes the characteristics of adult learners and strategies for instructors who teach them.

This article "The Agony and the Equity," produced by the Center for Teaching at Stanford University in 1992, addresses issues associated with fair testing and grading.

2011 report on survey of student views on the quality of instruction at Penn State.

2011 report on survey of student views on the quality of instruction at Penn State

This report is the first in a series encompassed by the Quality of Instruction project. The research question guiding this report is: How do students and teachers view the instructional process at University Park? Information to address this question was obtained by surveying both students and faculty concerning their attitudes and experiences at University Park during the 1995-1996 academic year. These student and teacher surveys were made possible by support from the Penn State Alumni Association provided Fern (Bunny) Willits as the 1995-96 Alumni Teaching Fellow awardee and the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. Class Attendance data were provided by the Office of Student Affairs Research and Assessment Pulse Survey.
The complete citation for the report is:
Willits, Fern K., Moore, Betty L., & Enerson, Diane M. (1997). Penn State, Quality of Instruction: Surveys of Students and Teachers at University Park. Pennsylvania State University.

A brief description of course portfolios is provided along with resources and links to portfolio examples.

An agenda and outline of a workshop topics on an academic resume, a teaching philosophy and an electronic teaching portfolio. This workshop is intended for graduate students who are teaching.

Three-page overview of the steps in documenting one's teaching through a portfolio.

This document is a 1993 teaching newsletter from Stanford University that addresses the topic of classroom assessments - brief, typically non-graded assignments, that reveals to both teachers and students the extent to which students have the knowledge the teacher expects them to have.

Examples of rubrics for 1) Class participation; 2) lab reports; 3)oral participation; and 4) a teaching portfolio. Document also includes rubrics of different grain sizes: holistic rubric compared with grading checklist. There is also a case study about a request to have an assignment regraded.

This document describes criteria for an effective electronic teaching portfolio.

Penn State Abington instructor Ross Brinkert answers some frequently asked questions about hybrid teaching and learning based on his own early experiences.

This two-page guide offers a wide range of teaching tips specifically intended for international TAs.

Case study: A teaching assistant discovers that many of the class activities she planned will be physically impossible for one of her students.

This FAQ sheet offers many suggestions for making good use of teaching assistants and classroom space.

Instructional development philosophy written by Dr. Angela Linse, executive director of the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence

This is a bibliography compiled by the University Libraries' Daniel Mack in 2009. It lists many resources on the topic of interdisciplinary teaching in higher education.

Intended audience: faculty developers. Teaching and faculty development philosophy of R. Neill Johnson, Although he is no longer at the Schreyer Institute, his statement provides a useful example.

This classroom observation form (faculty peer evaluation) provides both scaled and open-ended questions for use by anyone who is observing an instructor.

Listing of the Atherton Award winners up to 2010.

Listing of Teaching Fellow Award winners from 1986 to 2010.

Handout from Cindy Raynak's 2012 Teaching Professor presentation in Washington, DC. Describes the concept of "student-centered discussion," it's advantages for student learning, and how the process works.

General syllabus for the Course in College Teaching. The syllabus varies slightly from semester to semester depending upon who is leading the course, but this document gives an overview. For detailed information about the current semester's syllabus, contact site@psu.edu.

Teaching Professor 2013 Presentation. This presentation describes the characteristics of a positive peer review that encourages community.

This document describes how to use case studies as strategies to provide active learning experiences for students.

Drawing upon data from surveys of students and instructors at the 19 Commonwealth Campuses during 2012, this report addresses the following research questions:

• What are the instructional elements that Commonwealth Campus students and teachers view as important for quality teaching?
• How frequently are these elements realized in the teaching that actually occurs?
• How favorably do Commonwealth Campus students rate the overall quality of the instruction they receive?
• What factors relate to differences in how students' perceive instructional quality?
• Do the perceptions of undergraduate students at the Commonwealth Campuses concerning the quality of instruction differ from those at University Park?
• How, if at all, have the perceptions concerning instructional quality changed across time?

Drawing upon new data obtained from surveys of students and instructors at the University Park Campus of Penn State carried out in 2011, this report addresses the following research questions:

• What are the elements that students and instructors believe are most important to achieving quality teaching?
• How frequently do these occur in University Park classrooms today?
• How do University Park students rate the quality of the instruction they receive?
• What factors influence students’ ratings of teaching quality in a course?
• How have the perceptions of students and instructors changed since the 1996 survey?