Penn State University

Tools and Resources

Alphabetical List

Browse through the tools by the title of the resource.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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

This is a handout that describes intellectual stages of TA development.

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

This is one part of a TA Orientation guide from the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Calgary. It includes professional practices of teaching assistants, a list of questions you can ask yourself to prepare for your TA role, and additional resources.

Reference list for TAs: links to resources for undergraduates, including Counseling and Psychological Services and the Women's Resource Center

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.

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.

This book examines the reasons that undergraduates with high abilities in science, mathematics, and engineering switch into nonscience majors. The book is based on a three-year study of seven campuses.

Students may feel uncertain about the ethical use of AI in a given course and academic/professional field, and instructors may find it helpful to understand how students think about the ethical aspects of using AI and how they are using AI tools as learners. This resource offers recommendations for starting conversations with students about AI.

Instructors are the most important determinant of student participation in the Student Educational Experience Questionnaire (SEEQ). Students are more likely to complete the questionnaire if they know that instructors read their feedback and value it as a source of ideas to improve the course.

Instructors are the most important determinant of student participation. Students are more likely to submit feedback if they know that instructors value their feedback and use it to make improvements in the course. Below are suggestions for how you might discuss mid-semester feedback with your students.

Helping Practitioners and Researchers Identify and Use Education Research Literature. By K. J. Wilson and C. J. Brame. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 17(1). 22 Mar 2018
This article discusses a study that reveals the impact that active learning has on students' ability to learn fundamental concepts and skills varies with instructor knowledge of teaching and learning. The goal of the study was to discover knowledge that is important to effective active learning in large undergraduate STEM courses. The authors note that experts more commonly consider how students are held accountable, notice topic-specific student difficulties, elicited and responded to student thinking, and provided for students to generate their own ideas and work.

This FAQ about effective teaching and learning in large courses (large classes) from the Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation. The questions focus on reducing anonymity, managing and engaging students, active learning, checking for learning, incorporating writing and group work without overwhelming yourself.

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.

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.

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.

Collection of ideas for integrating activities that use AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools into teaching practice. Includes recommendations for discussion academic integrity, evaluating AI output, and creating with AI.

Enrich the educational experience of students through information technology.

2019 Teaching Award Rubric

Listing of the Atherton Award winners up to 2010.

Listing of Teaching Fellow Award winners from 1986 to 2010.

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.

A customizable observation tool used observations of teaching. The tool is a protocol that produces robust and nuanced depictions of classroom dynamics between teachers, students, and technologies. Based on research-based learning theories, the TDOP has been extensively field-tested and is being used by over 300 researchers, program evaluators, and professional developers to create detailed descriptions of what happens inside classrooms.

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 a recorded webinar presented by James M. Lang 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.

This webinar was recorded by Penn State Libraries staff using Mediasite Live, and it is stored in the libraries' Mediasite catalog. The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence bears no responsibility for the quality of the recording, its maintenance, its availability, nor its functionality. For help with the recording, call (814) 865-5400 or send an email message to MediaTechSupport@psu.edu.

Information for instructors who want to learn more about how to plan for instruction before and after a presidential election.

A brief overview of dos and don’ts to assist your planning for class sessions prior to and after a presidential election.

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.

“What Should Penn State Consider in the Evaluation of Teaching Besides Student Ratings and Peer Observation?” University Faculty Senate, Commonwealth Caucus Meeting, Monday, September 17, 2018
Senate Meeting Room, Kern Bldg.

The Commonwealth Caucus discussed additional sources of information and evidence that could inform the evaluation of teaching.

This webpage includes a list of resources to help faculty work with diverse student populations. It provides resources that are specific for various minority groups, such as women or students of color. The resources are related to diversity and inclusion.

Rubric used to evaluated teaching grant proposals.

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

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.

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.

Teaching Large Classes by Adam Wilsman, Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University
Teaching a large class poses many challenges, both in and out of the classroom. In the classroom, large enrollments can promote student disengagement and feelings of alienation, which can erode students’ sense of responsibility and lead to behaviors that both reflect and promote lack of engagement. Logistics can also be a challenge when teaching a large class. How does one best manage the daily administration of what can often feel like a small city? This resource presents strategies to help instructors deal with some of the challenges associated with teaching large classes.

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

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.

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.

This book is a collection of 24 articles, written from the two-year college perspective, featuring the most useful and relevant insights and advice from NSTA’s Journal of College Science Teaching. The collection is divided into four sections: unique issues associated with teaching science in two-year colleges, curricular issues, teaching strategies, and using technology in the classroom.




Developed by Anne Wessely of St. Louis Community College, the Teaching Squares program is designed to improve teaching skills and build community through a structured, non-threatening process of classroom observation and shared reflection. The process involves the best aspect of peer evaluation – observation and discussion – while excluding judgment and evaluation. Participants in a Teaching Square learn about the best practices of other faculty in order to improve their own teaching.

Teaching Squares offer faculty an opportunity to observe colleagues in action and reflect on their own teaching practices. A teaching square is a group of four instructors who agree to observe each other a few times during a semester, using an agreed upon set of observation norms. It is designed to be a non-evaluative, supportive and growth-based process.

Teaching Squares give faculty an opportunity to gain new insight into their teaching through a non-evaluative process of reciprocal classroom observation and self-reflection. A square is made up of four faculty, typically from different disciplines. The four faculty in each “teaching square” agree to visit each other’s classes over the course of a semester and then meet to discuss what they’ve learned from their observations.

This website includes resources, lesson plans, and curriculum guides to help fill the gap in educating about the experiences and history of Muslims all over the world. Please share and use these resources widely to help collectively address this gap and combat islamophobia in our classrooms.

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

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

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!

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

This document was created to provide you with a source of options for gathering data on teamwork assignments and projects. You may choose to adopt one of the examples as is, combine elements from several of the examples, or use the examples to identify characteristics that correspond to particular aspects of your assigned work, course content, or student population.

Team Science Toolkit is an interactive website to help support, conduct, and study team-based research. Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, or cross-disciplinary research is becoming more and more important to scientific breakthroughs and progress. But doing this kind of work can be challenging because of different disciplinary values, cultures, and communications and researchers are typically trained within a single discipline. This is a great resource for researchers or faculty planning research projects that include multiple disciplines, facing challenges, or needing ideas. Despite being housed in the National Cancer Institute, it is relevant for researchers from a wide variety of disciplines.

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.

Faculty sometimes find it difficult to respond to the written comments that accompany SRTEs (aka SETs). This document provides a template for sorting students' comments into themes. The themes provided are common ones, but your ratings may include other themes. If a student's comment includes many themes, we recommend splitting out the comments about different topics. After all of the students comments are sorted, sort the themes from those with the most comments to those with the fewest comments. This can help faculty recognize that not all students agree with the student who wrote one or two particularly hurtful comments. Typically, there is a natural break at around the 3rd or 4th theme and we recommend focusing on the themes most frequently mentioned by students.

This template can be used to develop a curriculum map, or matrix, which allows faculty to see which courses address each program level learning objective. Developing a curriculum map is an important step in the learning outcomes assessment (i.e. program assessment) process.

This document provides an example of a test blueprint, which can be used to help guide test development and ensure that the test questions appropriately reflect the learning objectives of the unit that the test is designed to assess. It can also help students when they study for the test.

This document is an example of a test blueprint (written for a research methods course), which can be created to help you match your test questions with your learning objectives *and* to help your students study for a test.

This test blueprint template can be downloaded and manipulated to help instructors effectively map exam questions to learning objectives, topics, modules, or themes.

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.

This document suggests a variety of testing models and explains why each is effective. They are alternatives or supplements to the "mid-term and a final" model.

Few of us would argue that quality feedback is useful, yet classroom-based research indicates that teachers do not give as much feedback as they think they do (e.g., Ingvarson & Hattie, 2008). This article shares a variety of resources regarding feedback.

This is the PowerPoint presentation that includes information from Dr. Susan Rankin's national study of the state of higher education for LGBT people. Dr. Rankin presented this in a session for the Schreyer Institute in April of 2011.

This document describes a strategy for getting students involved with the content by having them pair with other students to discuss the answer to an instructor-posed problem. The pairs then share their answers with the class.

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.

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.

Tips for Teaching Large Classes Online, Faculty Focus, Rob Kelly (3-17-2009) writes about strategies used by Jonathan Mathews, Professor of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State. Prof. Mathews still regularly teaches large enrollment online courses.

To Teach is to Learn is a series of podcasts focused on what it means to be surrounded by teaching and learning everyday. The series was created by Dr. Nichola Gutgold, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State, after she received the 2018 Alumni Teaching Fellow Award. Dr. Gutgold interviews colleagues about teaching and learning. This episode features Dr. Charlotte Eubanks, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies & Director of Graduate Studies, Comparative Literature.

To Teach is to Learn is a series of podcasts focused on what it means to be surrounded by teaching and learning everyday. The series was created by Dr. Nichola Gutgold, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State, after she received the 2018 Alumni Teaching Fellow Award. Dr. Gutgold interviews colleagues about teaching and learning. This episode features Dr. Denise Ogden, Professor of Marketing and Penn State's 2017 George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching.

To Teach is to Learn is a series of podcasts focused on what it means to be surrounded by teaching and learning everyday. The series was created by Dr. Nichola Gutgold, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State, after she received the 2018 Alumni Teaching Fellow Award. Dr. Gutgold interviews colleagues about teaching and learning. This episode features Dr. Doug Hochstetler, Professor of Philosophy and Interim Director of Academic Affairs at Penn State Lehigh Valley.

To Teach is to Learn is a series of podcasts focused on what it means to be surrounded by teaching and learning everyday. The series was created by Dr. Nichola Gutgold, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State, after she received the 2018 Alumni Teaching Fellow Award. Dr. Gutgold interviews colleagues about teaching and learning. This episode features Dr. Karen Kackley-Dutt, Associate Teaching Professor, Biology & recipient of Penn State's George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014.

To Teach is to Learn is a series of podcasts focused on what it means to be surrounded by teaching and learning everyday. The series was created by Dr. Nichola Gutgold, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State, after she received the 2018 Alumni Teaching Fellow Award. Dr. Gutgold interviews colleagues about teaching and learning. This episode features Dr. Laurie Grobman, Professor of English and Women's Studies and recipient of the award for Outstanding Professor of the Year-Baccalaureate Colleges in 2014 from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

To Teach is to Learn is a series of podcasts focused on what it means to be surrounded by teaching and learning everyday. The series was created by Dr. Nichola Gutgold, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State, after she received the 2018 Alumni Teaching Fellow Award. Dr. Gutgold interviews colleagues about teaching and learning. This episode features Mike Krasja, Assistant Teaching Professor of Business, recipient of Penn State's 2015 George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching, & Faculty Liaison for the Lehigh Valley LaunchBox.

This PowerPoint, giving by Bill Welsh, provides suggestions for how faculty can accommodate students with disabilities in their classrooms.

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

This document describes a strategy to help students get more involved in lectures by periodically posing an question and having them discuss with a neighboring classmate.

Web-based plagiarism detection and prevention system to which Penn State has a subscription.

This site provides a link to Penn State Learning's tutoring services. Subjects represented include: Chinese and Japanese, Computer Science, French and Italian, Mathematics, Spanish, Public Speaking, World Campus topics, and Writing. Penn State Learning also has guided study groups in the following areas: Accounting, Economics, Mathematics, Sciences, Statistics.

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.

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