Reflection on Fall 2018: Part 2

​The fall 2018 semester is quickly coming to a close, and all of us at TNP team want to take a moment to reflect on it.
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Earlier this semester we set some lofty goals for ourselves. If you don’t remember, each of TNP members outlined three goals for the upcoming academic year in a series of posts back in August. The goals revolved around research and writing, teaching, professional development, and productivity.  ​

At the end of this semester, I have mixed results with a 1 out of 2 for goals.

This fall I was planning to develop and launch a project that spanned teaching and research and to look at how frequent course feedback influenced students performance and perceptions of a course. I definitely underestimated the amount of planning and logistics I still needed to figure out before the fall semester started so I was  unable to get the project off the ground this fall. However, I may have the opportunity to launch in the spring if I get things fleshed out over break.

Even though I was unable to meet this goal yet, I did get involved in a new writing project that has gotten me back into my research specialization in morality. It has been fun to get back into the literature and explore current thinking in the field. This will ultimately end in a chapter for a new edition of a research handbook.

I am excited that my professional development goals have been met so far. This fall I organized a teaching group on campus with colleagues from my faculty cohort. We are meeting monthly and have so far worked on a few projects. Just before midterm, we developed a standard mid-term evaluation that we employed in our classes. We are also currently working on developing a more intensive peer review process that will take a developmental approach. The experience has been rewarding, and I look forward to learning more about what my colleagues are doing in their classrooms and exploring how those techniques can be useful in mine.

Here are some other things I have accomplished this semester:

• I tried a new annotation assignment this semester that I really liked.
• I taught five courses!
• I worked with colleagues to develop a proposal for a new major in Data Analytics
• I convinced my 3 y.o. son that Harry Potter is awesome and cannot wait until he is old enough to sit and listen to chapter books!!!! 

​Written by Ciara Kidder