'Excellence in Teaching - what is it?'

The Excellence in Teaching Award Scheme is a University-Guild collaboration which has presented over one hundred awards to UWA staff. This edition of ITL introduces the 2001 Excellence in Teaching award winners with practical tips about teaching that they have agreed to share with you. The Scheme provides both recognition and financial reward for those teachers that students identify as excellent teachers.

But what does excellence in teaching mean? The criteria for the awards give an indication of factors that students consider being characteristic of excellence in teaching.

The Faculty awards and the Supervision (PhD, Masters and Honours ) awards identify a number of characteristics of good teachers. These include not only the teacher's accessibility to students but also the care and equitable treatment of students and the quality of the advice and feedback provided to students. Excellent teachers have an enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, their subjects, are clear and effective communicators and have the ability to foster independence of thought in their students.

Units nominated for the Unit Excellence in Teaching Award are designed to foster independence of thought and stimulate intellectual creativity. They have clearly defined and detailed learning objectives, with the unit outcomes reflected in the objectives. There is cohesion in the unit structure and content so that the unit content relates to the unit objectives. The assessment is consistent with the ofjectives. and the methods of assessment enhance the students' understanding of the unit objectives. The material is relevant to the course and readily available for all students so that the students' expectations of the unit are met.

For the Innovation in Teaching Award, teaching methods and design must be characterised by the extent to which they have a practical outcome that improved teaching, learning, curriculum design, and/or assessment. They must also make effective and efficient use of resources. Ideally the innovation should be successfully integrated into the total learning process for the relevant course of study and have the potential to be applied to different fields of study or multi-disciplinary studies.

Parker Palmer (1998) observed that "Good teaching comes in myriad forms, but good teachers share one trait: They are truly present in the classroom, deeply engaged with their students and their subject".

• Palmer, P. (1998). The courage to teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass