Articles and resources to empower your teaching experience.
(1) The Idea Paper (Cashin) is a good article to read first as it provides a thorough overview of the faculty review process, in general. (Recommended)
Smith’s article (Peer Collaboration: Improving Teaching through Comprehensive Peer Review) focuses on the role of peer review in formative evaluation of teaching and provides an excellent overview of the rationale, components and procedures, and challenges and opportunities of peer review (and contrasts formative versus summative evaluation).
As we enter week five of the semester, many of us are thinking about assessments like tests and quizzes. Remote instruction has made us rethink the purpose and use of tests, and whether we are “testing” the right things.
The graphic above demonstrates the notion of authentic assessment, which is
“Engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to fashion performances effectively and creatively.
How to improve student performance on tests? This was a tough nut to crack for Dr. Ayana Hinton. After reading Make it stick: the science of successful learning, she tried something called the testing effect – a technique shown to increase long term retention. When that did result in the gains she wanted, she included peer grading.
A renewed interest in research on learning and teaching has greatly expanded the range of scholarship and resources that are focused on the intersection of learning, teaching, and pedagogy in higher education. Resources for a variety of topics are linked below and in the navigation menu.
In addition, faculty as well as colleagues in other offices and programs can contact me for help in identifying specific resources and scholarship on learning and teaching for their use including, for example, issues that address faculty development, academic advising, teaching and course evaluations, curriculum assessment, and measures of student academic achievement.
Mid-semester course evaluations are a valuable resource for improving student learning, enhancing teaching effectiveness, and fostering a positive classroom learning environment. Unlike course evaluations completed at the end of the semester, feedback from students obtained at one or more times during the semester can lead to significant learning and teaching changes for both students and instructors while the course is still in progress.
“Formative peer review of teaching is focused on the long-term enhancement of teaching and learning. Even when mandatory, the process should be primarily driven and guided by the faculty member’s personal goals, by feedback from students and/or colleagues, and/or by a desire to address problems in a specific course or academic context” (Smith, 2014).
Faculty development scholarship has addressed the different purposes, procedures, and responsibilities that distinguish formative from summative evaluation of teaching.
