Peer Review of Instruction
Feedback for professional development and summative evaluation.
Overview
Peer review is the process by which an instructor’s faculty peer observes a component of his or her teaching and provides feedback for professional development and summative evaluation. The Improving the Evaluation of Teaching initiative requires that departments develop a structure for peer review that specifies who will serve as reviewers, who will be reviewed, the schedule for the review process, and the teaching components that will be reviewed. While each department should create this structure, departments have considerable leeway to create a program that serves its unique needs.
Preparation
To prepare for the implementation of a peer evaluation program, your department or school should make several decisions which may be codified in a policy document.
Who will be reviewed? Your department may have Tenure Track Faculty, Non-Tenure Track Faculty, and Lecturers. Each of these groups may come with different levels of teaching experience and different schedules for rehiring and promotion. You should decide on a schedule under which each of these groups will undergo peer review.
Who will serve as reviewers? Your department will need to designate who is responsible for the peer review portion of the evaluation of teaching (e.g. is it a group of faculty members, one faculty member, or a department officer?). You will also have to decide how many peer reviewers will participate in each review. While many universities utilize just one reviewer, using two or more reviewers will provide greater inter-rater reliability and produce a more robust review process. You may decide to implement reviewer training to ensure that all reviewers understand the scope of the process and the type of feedback they are expected to provide.
What is the plan for peer review? Your department will have to decide how often an instructor is reviewed, and whether it is the same for every faculty rank (e.g. once every three years for full-time faculty, every year for lecturers, etc.). Formative evaluation is intended to help an instructor develop teaching skills. This type of peer review may be targeted toward populations in need of mentoring and support and may be conducted as often as necessary. Summative peer review evaluates instruction against a benchmark for good teaching and results in a formal letter for use in renewal, promotion, and tenure decisions. This type of review will be expected in the new teaching evaluation system, but it may only be necessary once or twice before promotion or renewal. In either case, a greater number of observations will improve the reliability of the process.
What will be reviewed? You must also decide whether the review will include observations of course materials, classroom teaching, online teaching, teaching portfolios, or all of these. Each mode of peer review has advantages and disadvantages when it comes to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the instructor’s teaching ability and the resources needed to complete the review.
Peer Review Options
Some different options for peer review are:
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