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Teaching Award Winners Address Learning Goals
In this annual edition of Teaching Times , recipients of major University teaching awards in 2005 discuss student learning outcomes, the significant and essential learning that an instructor expects students to achieve and demonstrate at the end of a course.
Outcomes that are defined and implemented by an instructor can help students achieve a more meaningful learning experience. A plan, or map, for learning, with concrete, attainable goals, can motivate students to become more aware of their individual ways of learning and thinking. It can promote in students a sense of responsibility for their own education.
The five winners of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award (CDTA) and two winners of the Bellet Teaching Excellence Award (BTEA) address the following questions:
- What are some outcomes that you establish for your course, and why do you think these are valuable?
- Do you explain these outcomes to your students, and, if so, how does this help their learning?
- How do you help students reach these outcomes?
- How do these outcomes “fit” with student learning outcomes of your department or discipline?
In responding to these questions, the award winners, who represent schools and departments across the University, provide examples of their diverse ways of addressing learning goals. Excerpts of their comments from articles follow:
  Pat Chew (Law, CDTA) addresses these questions by stating, “I progressively share responsibility for the educational process with the students, having them actively lead discussions based on the readings and on assignments—while I am vigilant about challenging their positions and their reasoning.”
 Referring to his school’s mission statement, Kevin Kearns (Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, CDTA) says that his “teaching goals are to build practical and transferable management skills, encourage ‘reflective’ management and develop skills in ethical leadership.” He achieves this by providing students with a variety of assignments that require them to explore new and diverse perspectives, build stronger communication skills, and learn from their own biases through role playing and group activities.
 Although he agrees that setting learning outcomes can be useful, Jim Seitz (English, CDTA) expresses misgivings about those he considers “overly precise. One of the problems with standards-based education is that it often assumes we already know what students should achieve as a result of their schooling. To my mind, the best teachers are those who continually revise their sense of what a course can do by remaining alert to the many ways that new groups of students learn new things from the ‘same’ material.”
 Using exams “to teach, as well as to assess, creative thinking processes,”Mark Strauss (Psychology, CDTA) encourages students to demonstrate higher level thinking. He illustrates his use of exams as a tool for reaching his course outcomes, stating “exams are a way to foster student engagement and in-depth understanding of the material.”
 As a faculty member teaching across disciplines, Linda Winkler (Natural Sciences, University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, CDTA) understands the need for students to take an active role in their own educations, and states that her “teaching outcomes include expanding students’ world views with the introduction of new materials and relating course material to students’ own lives.”
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  In her discussion on teaching novice poetry students how to develop their writing skills, Sharon McDermott (English, BTEA) states that “perhaps most importantly, I try to create an environment in the classroom in which students feel at ease sharing their work and tangling with the difficulties of trying to create something meaningful within the parameters of structure.”
 “When I teach Shakespeare, I want my students to understand his plays in something like the way Elizabethan audiences might have understood them,” says David Brumble (English, BTEA) as he discusses the importance of cultural contexts in order for students to take away meaning from their readings of literature.
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