A COVID-19 Informed Benchmark Portfolio of Teaching for SLPA 988: Dementia

The focus of this peer review of teaching portfolio was SLPA 988: Dementia. The course is offered in the Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders within the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This is an elective course at the graduate level which has a primary target of students in the master’s degree program in speech-language pathology. It is an advanced 900 level course and comes after students have completed at least one semester of clinical work with patients. My goal was to better understand how to improve the course as it transitions from a 1-credit hour 5-week mini session to a 2-credit hour 15-week session. Initially, I had planned to develop and assess reflection as a major component of change. However, the COVID-19 pandemic required a shift in teaching strategy and the focus became on what students would find most valuable as online teaching tools. The results indicated a shift in what students initially believed would be most useful to them in online learning at the start of the mini session compared to the end of the session. Future changes to the course assessments are discussed. This benchmark portfolio is a reflection on my course goals, teaching methods, and student learning outcomes