Effective Teaching
The Vision
Mines created a definition of effective teaching to establish a shared understanding to guide instructors and create consistency across campus. To create the definition, a Faculty Senate committee collaborated with the Trefny Center to review the empirical education literature. These efforts resulted in the identification of four characteristics of effective teaching that all Mines faculty can work towards. While each characteristic is distinct, the four overlap with and inform each other, together characterizing effective teaching. Next, each characteristic is described in more detail.
Four characteristics of effective teaching at Mines

INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED
Effective teaching begins with a course that is intentionally designed to support student learning and motivation, leveraging research-based practices while also maintaining a reasonable workload. A well-designed course includes:
A Well-articulated Purpose
Clear, Relevant, and Measurable Learning Outcomes
Formative and Summative Assessments
Instructional Activities
FOCUSED ON LEARNING
Effective teaching is focused on learning and on creating learning opportunities. It considers how students’ prior experiences shape their learning, is based on research about how people learn best, and frames the content in terms of its relevance to students’ lives and future careers (e.g., Ambrose et al., 2010; Seidel & Shavelson, 2007). An instructor who focuses on learning:
Activates students’ prior knowledge
Helps students think like disciplinary experts
Motivates students
Provides Practice and Feedback Opportunities
Guides Self-reflection
SUPPORTIVE OF STUDENTS
Effective teaching is supportive of all students as learners and as people (Cornelius-White, 2007). When students feel supported they are more likely to seek help from the instructor (Ishiyama & Hartlaub, 2002), persist in challenging tasks (Cohen et al. 1999), and persist in science majors (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997). Support can be communicated and facilitated in many ways, including in:
Classroom policies
Course content
Interactions that communicate care for students as learners
Interactions that communicate care for students as people
Guided student-student interactions
REFLECTIVE
Effective teaching is reflective. Schön (1983) coined the phrase “reflective practitioner” to capture the intellectual work that effective instructors do as part of their professional practice. An instructor who is reflective and scholarly in their teaching: