At the 2017 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, I published a tips and tricks paper about collecting and organizing documents for promotion and tenure electronically.  In this paper, I summarized resources I found useful during my first year on the tenure-track, some advice I was given, and a survey of other tenure-track faculty.  The full paper can be accessed from the ASEE website.

Abstract

During my first year as a faculty member, I used several features of Google Apps to help stay organized and streamline my workflow. Some of these ideas were obvious, while others took time to figure out. Since Gmail and Google Apps were already in place on my campus, it was an obvious starting point. I keep everything I am working on in Google Drive so that I have access to it from all of my devices. I keep track of everything that happens at a specific time with Google Calendar. I also use Reminders in Google Calendar to remind me of paper and grant deadlines. The Goal feature is also helpful for tracking daily writing and exercise goals.

For research, I use Google Docs to write conference papers collaboratively. I also save all of the papers I am working on in Google Drive. I also started a place to keep literature relevant to my research and a document to capture potential research questions and projects. I also have a folder in Google Drive where I save copies of potential grants or conferences of interest. I have a spreadsheet to track the budget and expenses from my start-up fund. Finally, I started a research portfolio that allows me to track and record research activities for annual reviews and eventually my tenure portfolio.

For teaching, I created a Google Doc for each lecture with my lesson plan. When I co-teach a laboratory with someone else, we share all of our materials (e.g. rubrics, assignments, and handouts) for each experiment in Google Drive. The shared folder allows both of us to make changes from anywhere and the other person always has the latest versions. When I give a group project in class, I also create a folder for each team to use. I have found it is helpful to create the folders so that they each have a unique name in my Google Drive. I can also track, if necessary, which team members have been contributing to the project. I have also started a teaching portfolio in a Google Doc. With my teaching portfolio, I also save all the raw data from grade books and evaluations that will eventually be added to my teaching portfolio.

For service, I have a portfolio to track service contributions for tenure. I also keep notes and minutes from meetings that I attend. I also have a folder on Google Drive for each organization I am a member.

This paper will include lessons learned and best practices from the above applications of Google Apps.

I also presented a workshop based on the data collected in this study at the 2017 Society of Women Engineers Annual Conference (WE17).  The slides from this presentation and files I use to track my research project can be found on the blog post about that workshop.

Citation

Reck, R. M. (2017, June), Using Google Apps to Collect and Organize My Tenure Portfolio Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. https://peer.asee.org/29075