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Teaching Benchmark Portfolio

Patrick Bitterman, PhD

Assistant Professor, Geography

School of Global Integrative Studies

(GEOG 181) and how the course materials facilitate student learning. The primary goal of this

course is to investigate the nature of – and connections among - urgent global environmental

issues in the context of geographic concepts and methods. As a large survey course, there are

varied assessments that are punctuated with three summative exams. This portfolio assesses the

current state of student learning prior to the addition of recitation sections. In doing so, it

assesses exam performance over the course of the semester and by student demographics with an

eye towards equity gaps in achievement. Further, it provides a qualitative assessment of student

feedback with respect to instruction and assessment. My analysis supports the coming addition of

recitation sections and identifies a gap in achievement among first-generation college students

and their peers. Unsurprisingly, it also suggests that in-class attendance is associated with better

Key words: scholarship of teaching and learning, peer review of teaching, reflections on

pedagogy

Table of Contents

Reflective and Scholarly Teaching (FIRST) Program for multiple reasons. First, student

enrollment in this course is significantly lower than benchmarks set by the Geography Department.

Given the salience of the topics and its position as an ACE (Achievement-Centered Education) 6

or 9 option, this course should easily attract 100 students per semester. I base this assessment off

my experience in graduate school at the University of Iowa, where I helped teach a very similar

course titled Contemporary Environmental Issues. That course consistently enrolls more than 200

students every semester in a very similar institutional context. Growth in introductory courses is

important to the Geography Program as we attempt to increase our majors and remain competitive

under the new incentive-based budget model. It is my hope that we can use GEOG 181 as a way

to attract new students to the major. Second, given these motivations, I have been steadily revising

the opportunity presented by the FIRST Program to rework assessments to focus more on case

studies and less on summative exams. Currently, assessment includes three case study assignments

that connect the broader topical issues to students’ lived experiences. I have found this approach

leads to better engagement, salience, and learning. However, it also increases the amount of

grading – both in volume and complexity. I wish to balance learning with assessment in a way that

doesn’t overwhelm other responsibilities.

This document is a benchmark portfolio that documents the current state of the course during this

time of transition. The reworking of GEOG 181 is taking place as the Geography Program finds

its place within the School of Global Integrative Studies, alongside the Anthropology and Global

assessment we are using? Overall, the work I undertook while developing this portfolio focused

on 1) restructuring assignments, 2) evaluating the efficacy of exams, and 3) measuring student

engagement/interest. I expect to use this portfolio (in conjunction with future portfolios produced

via participation in the FIRST Program) to assess the progress towards our broader goals of

improving the program. This will be of personal use to me during review for promotion and tenure,

but also to colleagues who wish to modify their offerings.

interactions that Geography majors will take in the Geography Program at the University of

Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). This introductory course frames human-environment geography in the

context of the leading global environmental issues of our time, particularly those associated with

land use, natural and anthropogenic disasters, pollution, energy, and climate change. The course

builds upon social-ecological systems frameworks and stresses the importance of geographic

context and “systems thinking” in understanding contemporary environmental issues. While the

course focuses on the geographic implications of those issues, it also adopts an interdisciplinary

perspective that emphasizes the causes, consequences, and solutions of/to the issues. The course

is designed as a survey course. Nearly every week introduces a new topic, building on (and

connecting to) previous topics/modules such that by the end of the course, students have a more

biological, and economic processes

2. investigate linkages among environmental issues

3. introduce students to basic geographic concepts and methods in the context of current

environmental problems

To achieve these goals, students work towards five learning objectives. By the end of the term,

students will be able to successfully:

1. Describe the primary causes and consequences of contemporary environmental problems,

as well as potential solutions

2. Comprehend linkages between human and environmental processes, and among

Many incoming UNL students are not aware of important contemporary environmental issues or

how they are connected to human influence on the landscape. For example, how agricultural

intensification leads to the loss of biodiversity and increased water pollution, or how the

transboundary movement of waste impacts human and environmental health. It is the goal of this

course to bring light to these issues and then explicate the linkages between cause and effect. The

connections between issues often stretch over significant geographic space or time. Therefore, this

Enrollment/demographics

The course is certified for ACE 6 and 9 requirements, therefore students come from a wide array

of backgrounds and programs across UNL. Enrollment has historically been approximately 40

students each semester, and students typically are in their first or second years at UNL. However,

the enrollment is trending up substantially, with 118 students enrolled in this focal term of fall

semester 2021. In this term, the most common major was undeclared (31 students), followed by

Meteorology-Climatology (11), Environmental Studies (8), and Pre-Health (7). The student

population in the course is 49.2% female (note: UNL only collects data on binary genders), 20%

from underrepresented groups (UNL defines underrepresented as Black or African American,

Global Environmental Issues (GEOG 181) is a required course for all Geography majors. It is the

first course in “human-environment geography” within the Geography Program. While it is not

listed as a perequisite for any course in the program, it is assumed that GEOG BA/BS students will

take the course prior to moving on to more advanced offerings. As the number of Geography

majors has decreased substantially in the last 5 years, this requirement has become less relevant in

driving enrollment. Accordingly, this course is part of a strategy to recruit students to the program

and to the field. I have explicitly designed lessons to incorporate other aspects of the field to

demonstrate the breadth of Geography and Geographic Information Science (GIScience) to

students that often assume that “geography is just state capitals and maps”, which it is not.

multiple geographic scales. At the start of each lecture period, time is provided for open discussion

and “environmental issue show and tell”. During the lecture, the slide deck is broken up by at least

two interactive components. Small group activities are designed to break up the lectures and to

give students an opportunity to connect broader concepts to their own lived experiences.

Additional learning occurs outside the classroom in case study assignments, discussed below.

Applications (9

Edition)” by William P. Cunningham and Mary Ann Cunningham. Additional

readings are made available via the Canvas LMS. These readings include academic articles,

excerpts from other texts, and popular press articles. Optional materials to supplement learning –

commonly web links, videos, and other readings – are also available on Canvas.

In addition to weekly open-book quizzes on the assigned readings, there are 6 major homework

assignments in this course. The first assignment is a self-assessment of students’ ecological

footprint, which reinforces the first two weeks of material and provides an opportunity for self-

reflection. Students must also complete three case studies, each of which relates to at least two

modules. The case studies also ground the more conceptual topics in “real world” settings, and all

and impacts of the topics – but more importantly, they reflect on their own personal experiences,

viewpoints, or concerns. Following the submission of the reflection essays, students engage in peer

review of others’ essays. They read two of their peers’ submissions and make constructive

comments or ask follow-up questions. Students also take three exams outside of class in the UNL

Digital Learning Center (DLC). The final outside activity is a series of weekly open-book quizzes

on Canvas that verify students are completing the readings. The quizzes are due at the end of each

topic week.

In total, the course materials include the textbook and Canvas-delivered readings, while the outside

materials include weekly quizzes for each module (14), three exams, and six assignments. I offer

The course now explicitly grounds theory and concepts from human-environment geography in

the most pressing contemporary environmental issues that students will face in their lifetimes. The

current centrality of lectures and summative assessment in the course is due to multiple constraints,

in particular the now-significant number of students (118) and instructional support. The growth

in enrollment – even during the COVID-19 pandemic – is a welcome development. However, it

also generates a significant grading burden. In fall semester 2021, I was assigned (for the first time)

Using feedback from students and peers, over time I have de-emphasized the weighting of exams

and have increased the more interactive assessment components in this course. Further, anecdotal

evidence suggests that students respond more strongly to the case study assignments, which I hope

to strengthen in future semesters. Overall, the course’s objectives emphasize drawing connections

among the weekly topics and among different geographic scopes and scales. In my experience,

these objectives are better supported by formative assessments rather than exams.

Analysis of Student Learning

As this is a survey course with a large number of students (enrollment of 118 for this focal term of

across multiple demographic variables. Lastly, this section will summarize the results of a “keep,

stop, start” student feedback activity undertaken in week 10.

This course has three exams, including a non-cumulative final exam. The exams are summative

assessments designed to measure student learning about the nature and extent of the connected

units covered in course materials. Students tend to perform worse on the first exam than on later

exams. This pattern was again found during the Fall 2021 course (Figure 1).

believe in not mandating attendance – students’ time is their own, and if they do not wish to spend

it in class, it is their choice. I support this flexibility by posting all lecture materials to Canvas prior

to the class period. However, the anecdotal evidence I presented above also strongly suggests that

attending lecture is correlated with higher grades. While the direction of causality is still unclear,

it would likely benefit students to attend lectures. To emphasize that point to future students, I will

present that analysis from this portfolio on the first day of class. It is also clear from my analysis

that I need to better prepare students for the first exam – especially those students in their first year

at university. Many of my students have informally suggested that my in-class rapport implied to

them the exam would be easy, and that they didn’t need to study. I purposefully do not provide

students with exam study guides, as the act of creating one is itself an effective study tool. Once

program, I was aware of many of the theories and practical ideas for improving student learning.

However, now that I have been teaching independently for three years, it was very useful to revisit

many of these concepts and apply them in a setting where I have control over the educational

environment. It is fulfilling to see students respond positively to evidence-based changes in

instruction. I have also learned that while assessing student knowledge is a relatively

straightforward process, assessing student learning requires much more deliberate experimental

design and data collection. Even after my participation with FIRST is complete, I will continue to

engage in self-assessment over the course of the semester to identify how to adapt to ever-changing

student needs. Lastly, the program reminded me that there is no single way to design a course –

nor is design ever complete. It is appropriate that I used GEOG 181 as my entry into the FIRST

Evaluation scale