Demystifying the Dossier: Preparing the Teaching Dossier

Facilitators:  
Cora McCloy, PhD, Faculty Liaison Coordinator, SoTL, CTSI  
Kyle Turner, MSc, Faculty Liaison, Teaching and Learning, CTSI

This webinar is part of the Demystifying the Dossier Series. Faculty are welcome to attend one or multiple workshops in the series; recordings will be available for all sessions online. 

At the University of Toronto, a teaching dossier must be submitted as part of the formal review process for tenure and continuing status. Beyond the information included in an academic CV, a teaching dossier describes and documents an instructor’s teaching expertise, goals and priorities for teaching and learning, contributions to course and curriculum design efforts, evidence of student impact, and evidence of teaching leadership. 

This session focuses on an overview of the content and overall structure of an effective teaching dossier. Participants will develop a plan for assembling and strengthening their own dossiers. They will be guided in how to use a narrative throughout their dossier to connect and create coherence between multiple sections and sources of evidence.  Participants will also have an opportunity to engage with their divisional guidelines to draft key headings for their dossier. 

Participants in this workshop will: 

• Engage with your own Divisional Guidelines on Teaching Effectiveness to map out key criteria
• Identify the key elements of your dossier and artifacts for inclusion
• Assess alignment between your teaching claims and evidence, and identify effective ways to frame evidence
• Plan steps for editing your developing narrative and preparing your final document

The goal is for participants to leave the session with a clear sense of what steps to take to enhance their dossier drafts. Participants will be provided a digital workbook prior to the webinar and this document will form the basis of the session activities. Please note that this webinar will focus on the preparation of a teaching dossier by appointed faculty members for the purposes of undergoing a review process (tenure or continuing status). Teaching dossiers prepared for job searches carry different expectations and will not be the focus of this session.