By JENNY GIAUQUE
The BYU Faculty Center recently completed a video collection called the Reflective Teaching Series.
These video tapes are now available for faculty and teaching assistants.
Information from the faculty center states that 35 faculty members considered to be among the best teachers on campus were interviewed and filmed. The faculty center news release says that they hope this video collection will enable successful teachers to share some of their insights and ideas about teaching with other teachers and teaching assistants.
Louise Illes, assistant director of organizational development at the faculty center, said that these videos should help teachers be more reflective about their own teaching practices.
“These tapes will help teachers realize what they’re doing to make the classroom unique,” Illes said.
Faculty center information states that the faculty members interviewed were asked questions in five areas. The characteristics of effective teachers, enhancing student learning, teaching at BYU, teaching scholarship and the rewards of teaching.
Illes said that the faculty center selected outstanding and dynamic teachers for the video.
“We selected the teachers for the interviews after actually watching many of them in class, and receiving feedback from fellow teachers and students,” Illes said. “Almost all of them have also received teaching awards of some kind in the past.”
Illes hopes that teachers will use the series to reflect on and improve their own teaching skills.
Illes also said that they would like to have a website for the Reflective Teaching Series in the future.
“We’d like to have the interviews put on CD so that people can view the series without checking out a tape,” Illes said.
Meetings to implement the Reflective Teaching Series website are in the works, Illes said.
However, video tapes of the series are available now for teachers, teaching assistants and even students who are interested in learning more about effective teaching, she said.
The faculty center press release states that they began interviewing teachers in the summer of 1996 and completed the interviews last January.
Illes said that fine tuning and editing of the tapes is now complete.
Steve Albrecht, director of the School of Accounting and Information Systems, was one of the faculty members interviewed.
“The greatest advice I could give to other teachers is to always be over-prepared and to be accessible to the students,” Albrecht said.
Albrecht said that he thinks the Reflective Teaching Series will be valuable to other teachers if they will use it.
Those interested in viewing the tapes can check them out from the faculty center are in room 167 of the Testing Center.
