Engineering Teaching Portfolio Program (ETPP)

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CAEE Final Report, Section 4.0 contains details about ETPP

ETPP Materials >>

Curriculum and supplemental session materials

The Engineering Teaching Portfolio Program was designed to support engineering graduate students with an interest in pursuing a faculty career by advancing their thinking about teaching through the development and peer-based discussion of portfolios.

Program Design Goals

  • Assist future engineering faculty in developing a teaching portfolio.
  • Encourage ETPP participants to reflect on teaching.
  • Investigate the impact of the ETPP sessions on participants and the processes that led to those impacts.

Methods and Implementation

Each participant in ETPP prepared a teaching portfolio consisting of a teaching philosophy, two to five annotated artifacts, and a diversity statement. A program session typically consisted of eight weekly meetings. ETPP was distinctive in combining social interaction with a peer-facilitated structure. ETPP also embedded opportunities to learn about teaching in the production of something inherently desirable to future faculty (the portfolio), included conversations about diversity in prominent ways, and involved a way of talking about teaching that would support participation by people with a wide range of prior experiences. Section 4.1 of the CAEE Final Report provides more details about the program and its development.

There were approximately 100 program “graduates” over 11 sessions held between spring 2003 and summer 2006 and several small-scale spinoff efforts. An examination of the multiple offerings of ETPP suggests that the educational power of developing a portfolio can come from consideration of the significant questions that are often associated with portfolio construction, e.g., who am I talking to, what exactly do I want to say about my teaching, who judges teaching, how do I provide evidence of my strengths as a teacher, what counts as “good” teaching. Section 4.2 of the CAEE Final Report provides more details about the offerings.

Assessing Impact

To learn about the impact of the sessions on participants and the processes that led to those impacts, the team engaged in a scholarly analysis of the program offerings. In addition, the team worked to characterize the distinctive features of the ETPP initiative and the nature of teaching portfolio initiatives around the nation. The knowledge gained from these investigations was used to refine the design of successive portfolio offerings.

In general, participants were very positive in describing their experiences in the portfolio sessions. Participants indicated that discussion with their peers was the most valuable part of the program and that feedback from peers was particularly important. Section 4.3 of the CAEE Final Report describes more fully the impact of the program on participants.