I have created an online teaching portfolio as part of the Penn State Teaching with Technology certificate program. In additional to serving as a record of my teaching, it also has example documents and learning objects I have created as a science librarian.
Overall I would say that my teaching has followed a strategy of rapid prototyping and iterative design that I learned as a computer engineering student. This concept involves swift design decisions and the willingness to take chances and has often been called the “perpetual Beta test.” I believe that as a research practitioner, it is my professional responsibility to experiment and refine my teaching techniques toward effective student outcomes.
My online teaching portfolio shows a few examples of this, but this approach runs throughout my teaching. I have used post-instruction assessments of students to find areas to work on and adapted my instruction before teaching that class again. Even if there was no feedback to go on I have integrated a new technology, example, or teaching technique in each class in order to improve my teaching effectiveness. I have had to be willing to try new things, even if failure is a real possibility, in order to move forward or even keep up with changes in higher education and information technology.