The Peer Review of Teaching Protocol/Peer Review of Online Teaching Protocol/Peer Review of Clinical Teaching forms can be used for evaluation of teaching; e.g., for annual reviews and promotion and tenure. Current UA Promotion and Tenure guidelines for both tenure- and career-track instructors, as well as continuing-status dossiers, include a teaching evaluation to be conducted by a member(s) of the unit's tenure/promotion committees.
Recommended guidelines for using the protocol for evaluation of teaching:
- Department faculty members agree on which Classroom Observation Tool items will be used for all teaching evaluations in that department. No more than ten items is recommended; we recommend creating a departmental template.
- For instructions on creating and editing templates, please consult the Template Manager Guide available in the Help tab of the Classroom Observation Tool Suite.
- For instructions on using a template to schedule an observation, please consult the User Guide available in the Help tab of the Classroom Observation Tool Suite. Note that once an observation template is created, the candidate needs to schedule the observation, as the Tool will access a list of current courses for that instructor.
- For review of online courses, all items on the Online Course Review Tool are completed.
- For review of clinical teaching, all items on the selected Clinical Teaching form are completed.
- For tenure-track reviews, reviewers are tenured faculty members. For career-track reviews, reviewers hold a higher rank than the promotion candidate.
- Reviewers consciously strive to set aside any biases; e.g. those related to gender, ethnicity, and teaching style. Resources on unconscious bias and how faculty gender and race impact teaching experiences can guide reviewers.
- For on-ground courses, more than one class session is observed or more than one reviewer observes different class sessions to provide a more reliable sense of the candidate’s overall teaching quality. For review of online courses, multiple reviewers of the course site or reviews at different points during the semester can provide a more reliable view of the candidate.
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For Flex In-Person courses, the Classroom Observation Tool can be used to evaluate synchronous teaching (in any of the modalities), and the Online Course Review Tool can be used to evaluate the asynchronous aspects of an instructor's course.
- Pre-observation/review meetings are held, to prepare for the classroom or clinical teaching observations/course site reviews. These meetings can be streamlined versions of those used for formative review of teaching. The meetings focus on the instructor’s goals and learning outcomes for the course/clinical teaching, what they ask students to do to attain the learning outcomes, and how they assess students’ learning.
- After the observation/review:
- Reviewer(s) prepares a summary letter addressed to the department head that summarizes the candidate’s strengths and areas that need development, citing specific examples from the class observations/course site reviews.
- The following questions can be used as a guide for preparing the summary letter:
- What is the class/clinical teaching that was observed/reviewed (level, format, content)?
- How many class/clinical teaching sessions were observed and how many observers collaborated on this review?
- What were the instructor's major teaching strengths as demonstrated in this class/clinical teaching session or course review?
- What suggestions do you have for improving this instructor's teaching?
- What did the instructor do during the class sessions/in online learning activities and assessments/during clinical teaching to engage students in learning important content? How could the instructor improve student engagement?
- What did the instructor do during the class sessions/in online learning activities and assessments/during clinical teaching to assess students’ learning of important content (informally or formally)? How could the instructor improve student assessment?
If you have any questions about the use of the Peer Review of Teaching Protocol or would like to provide any feedback, please email Ingrid Novodvorsky.