Evaluation of teaching can have many purposes, including collecting feedback for teaching improvement, developing a portfolio for job applications, or gathering data as part of personnel decisions, such as reappointment or promotion and tenure. Most of the methods described below can be used for all of these functions. What follows are multiple methods for collecting information about instructors’ activities, accomplishments, and effectiveness in teaching, in the classroom and beyond. While this list includes best practices for using student ratings, it also offers suggestions for ensuring that student ratings are not the only source of evidence used to assess instructional effectiveness, an approach consistent with research. In addition, detailed resources are available on the topics of student ratings of instruction, peer review of teaching, and teaching portfolios and course portfolios. To set up an appointment with a CRLT consultant to discuss teaching evaluation methods, complete our consultation request form.
OverviewsThis page offers an overview of a variety of methods for obtaining feedback on your teaching, including techniques for soliciting student feedback, for cultivating self-reflection, and for receiving observation and consultation from peers and supervisors.
This article offers a brief outline of a process for obtaining a comprehensive evaluation of the quality of a faculty member's teaching using multiple sources of data.
This paper describes direct and indirect benefits of several sources for evaluating teaching effectiveness, including ratings from students, colleagues, and the department chair. It also details specific schedules for evaluating different types of teachers, such as first year faculty, non-tenured, and tenured (see p. 6). Evaluation and report templates are found in the appendices.
A list of books and articles for further reading about peer review and teaching evaluation more broadly.
This resource discusses several ways faculty coordinators can provide GSIs with feedback on their teaching, both for improvement and for personnel decisions.
Evidence That Can Be Collected From ColleaguesFor resources on many of the following topics, visit CRLT's web page on peer review of teaching.
In general, efforts to collect information for improvement can be informal and focus on specific areas an individual instructor wishes to develop. Information for job applications involves presenting one’s best work and meeting the requirements outlined in job ads. However, when the purpose of evaluation is personnel decision making, it is important to use a comprehensive and systematic process. Because there are many dimensions to pedagogical work, it is best to use multiple measures involving multiple sources of data to evaluate the range of instructional activities, which can include the following:
To ensure that an evaluation system adopted is credible and acceptable, faculty members must have a strong hand in its development. Before departments and schools adopt teaching evaluation systems, faculty should come to consensus on their criteria for effective teaching. Departments and schools can then use these criteria to guide implementation of specific evaluation methods. In general, evaluations systems need to be flexible enough to accommodate diversity in instructional methods used in the department, school, or college (e.g., lecture, discussion, lab, case study, small group interaction, practicum, studio teaching, fieldwork, clinical work, etc.). Chairs, associate deans, or faculty committees can set up an appointment with a CRLT consultant to discuss teaching evaluation methods, by completing our consultation request form.