Inside the Undergraduate Teaching Experience—The University of Washington's Growth in Faculty Teaching Study

The image of college faculty members as abstracted, white-haired, tweed-jacketed professors, mumbling lectures from notes that were yellowed by twenty years of repeated use is still pervasive. In this view, college faculty care only about their research and have little connection to the students sitting passively in front of them. Inside the Undergraduate Teaching Experience directly challenges this view of today s college faculty and serves as a guide for graduate students and new faculty who seek ways both personal and pedagogical to become more effective teachers.
Inside the Undergraduate Teaching Experience reports the results of the University of Washington s Growth in Faculty Teaching Study (UW GIFTS), which sought to find out whether or not faculty ever change what they do in the classroom, even when there is little external pressure for them to do so. Key findings in the study were that all courses that faculty members taught were deeply embedded in their academic disciplines, even freshman-level classes; that content and critical thinking as goals for learning could not be separated; that faculty members were making changes to their teaching continuously; that such changes were motivated by the faculty member s intentional assessment of the learning needs of her particular classes; and that most changes were aimed at helping students meet faculty members goals for learning.

Catharine Hoffman Beyer is Research Scientist and Lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Writing Program at the University of Washington.

Edward Taylor is Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Academic Affairs and Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Washington.

Gerald M. Gillmore is former Director of the Office of Educational Assessment at the University of Washington.