Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Teaching Portfolios 

I was selected as an Excellent Teaching Practitioner in 2024, on the basis of this Teaching Portfolio: 

•  nicholas_pedagogical_portfolio_2023_submit.pdf

I was selected as a member of the Lund University Teaching Academy by the Faculty of Social Sciences in March 2017. 

• Teaching Portfolio- 2016

Assessment Rubrics

One outcome of my participation in pedagogical training is an increased use of rubrics for assessing writing, which I find (and research also shows) benefits both students (by increasing student learning and improving writing), and teachers (by making assessment faster and easier, as well as more transparent).

My use of rubrics has evolved over time, as seen below (the most recent are listed first).

My first rubrics were very detailed, and highly elaborated, where I tried to capture every element of an assignment.

Now I use more synthetic rubrics (preferably that fit on 1 page) that align the assessment criteria with the possible grades (in our case, 5 for Excellent, 4 for Very Good, 3 for Good, or Fail). (I realized it doesn't help to have more rubric categories than possible grades!)

Note it's important to align the overall learning outcomes of the course with the specific criteria assessed for an assignment, so that you're assessing the student on how well they fulfill the learning outcomes.  

Feel free to use or adapt these rubrics: 

• 1 page rubric for policy brief: master_rubric_2023.xlsx (Methods 2023; assesses Claim; Reasoning + Evidence; Quantitative analysis; Figures + captions; source use; + Writing structure and style). 
• a short rubric for a general academic essay (2014 Pre-Course Assignment; 2 pages; assesses Claim + Ideas; Evidence + Analysis; Structure; and Style) 
• a rubric for writing research papers (Earth Systems Science, 2015; assesses according to paper section, Introduction; Methods; Results;  Discussion/Conclusion; Writing structure + style; Originality + creativity.) 
• a detailed rubric for writing a natural science paper. (2013 Excel sheet, more for my own thinking about what to assess, not given to students) 

Reports from Pedagogical Training

​I'm obsessed with constructive alignment-- the "process of ensuring that course learning goals, activities and assessment tasks are coordinated to produce the intended outcome for student learning" (Biggs and Tang, 2011). Here's how I carry out constructive alignment: 

• Presentation to teaching collegium showing alignment of learning outcomes throughout a course​

I have been active in pedagogical training at Lund University, where I have participated in the Docent course at LTH, focusing on best practices in graduate student supervision and mentoring. As a part of this course, I designed and led a team research project using a survey (N=123) to evaluate how well PhD students at Lund and Malmö Universities met the national learning objectives of Swedish PhD education.

• Nicholas et al., Student preparedness in PhD education.
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I have also participated in two courses through the Lund University Centre for Educational Development emphasizing student-centered learning and theories of knowledge acquisition and application and the use of constructive alignment in curriculum design. Through these courses, I have redesigned teaching activities and the course curriculum for my Earth Systems Science course (my analysis for this course project using curricular alignment can be downloaded here).

I'd be very happy if these materials are of use to others- and feedback is welcome!