Assessment of Teaching - Peer Review
As part of the Faculty Assessment of Teaching Framework, the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs has announced that academic units need to update their peer review guidance during the 2023-2024 academic year. Below are key elements of all unit guidelines.
- Unit peer review guidelines must be consistently applied across the unit and ranks and clearly communicated to faculty.
- The relevant administrator and the faculty member being reviewed should collaborate to choose reviewers, with the administrator making the final decision.
- Faculty under review should have the opportunity to submit names of potential reviewers.
- Reviewers may be selected inside or outside the unit, and the unit should outline the need for discipline expertise across reviewers.
- The faculty member under review can reject a proposed reviewer after consultation with their administrator.
- Penn State's research-based Elements of Effective Teaching should serve as a foundation for the peer review of teaching.
- Units will determine which sources of assessment will be used and how these sources will be reviewed.
- The content of each evaluation should include only evidence-based observations. That is, the assessment (i.e., evaluations and conclusions should be tied to corresponding evidence).
- Summative peer review of teaching ideally consists of more than one source of assessment that may or may not include course observation.
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If course observation is an element of a unit’s peer review guidelines,
- Units should have guidelines for reviewing courses in a variety of delivery modes (e.g., hybrid, in-person, online).
- Units should make clear what constitutes a course observation.
If you would like to discuss Peer Review with a SITE faculty member, please reach out to any of the consultants or email SITE@psu.edu
