Tools and Resources

This document describes several strategies that can be used to make concepts "concrete" and provide tactile material that can help students learn.

Item Analysis (a.k.a. Test Question Analysis) is an empowering process that enables you to improve mutiple-choice test score validity and reliability by analyzing item performance over time and making necessary adjustments. Knowledge of score reliability, item difficulty, item discrimination, and crafting effective distractors can help you make decisions about whether to retain items for future administrations, revise them, or eliminate them from the test item pool. Item analysis can also help you to determine whether a particular portion of course content should be revised or enhanced.

A rubric for assessing oral communication work.

FERN WILLITS AND MARK BRENNAN (2015) The University as a Community of Learning
Perceptions of Students and Teachers in Three Settings, The Journal of the World Universities Forum
Part of the Quality of Instruction (QOI) series supported by a Schreyer Institute grant

This document describes a specific strategy that provides a collaborative learning experience for students.

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

This document lists pros and cons associated with fair use of multimedia works in a checklist format.

This file contains a list of "item-writing rules," which will help you to write multiple choice questions in a way that will improve the ability of the test to focus on the content and prevent students from guessing the correct answer without knowing the material. The rules were developed by experts in the field of psychometrics, like the people who write questions for SATs or GREs.

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.

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 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 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.