As you develop new courses, prepare personal course expectations, and/or facilitate student learning, considering these comments and questions will help you incorporate the Regis mission into your teaching:
- Jesuit educational institutions were not intended to be ends in themselves but instruments to aid Jesuits and their fellow humans to attain the purpose for which they were created, the knowledge, love, and service of God. Is this instrumental character of the work of Regis University evident to the students – in what is said to them and in what they can observe? How?
- Is the structure and sequence of the educational program at Regis University based on a coherent, explicitly articulated rationale, which is known and accepted by the faculty? Is there an awareness of how the different disciplines and courses fit into an overall rationale? (resources Undergraduate Core Educational Experience Philosophy Statement, Coming to Terms with the Mission, The Educational Principles of the Spiritual Exercises) How does your course fit into the stated rationale? How does your teaching method fit with the overall rationale?
- Whenever possible and reasonable, do you adjust your course to the needs, creativity, and interests of your students – so that, within the overall plan and educational experience, there is adaptation to individuals or sub-groupings of students? Are there alternative assignments or assessment activities allowing for different ways to accomplish course outcomes?
- Do you promote patterned activity that allows the student to systematically develop the most efficient and effective way to approach learning in your subject? Do you consider your course a practicum in method through which the student emerges as an efficient learner who has internalized the principles of learning in your discipline?
- Are students expected to “think for themselves,” or is the level of activity and assessment predominantly recall and comprehension?
- Does your method of making students accountable go beyond externally imposed norms to promote patterns of self-reflection, self-analysis, and self-criticism? Can you give one example? Are students in your course developing the habit of analyzing and improving their performance?
- At the end of the course, are your students more capable of continuing to learn?
- Do you teach in a way that challenges students to achieve a personal rather than a purely academic grasp of your subject? How?
- How do your methods challenge students to develop the analytical skills necessary to examine the relationships of power and privilege in contemporary society?
- How are students encouraged to use their knowledge and skills in service for the common good and to work toward a more just and peaceful world?
