Peer Review of Teaching in the Age of Covid

Zoom Room 7

Pressures from teaching during the pandemic plus renewed attention to social justice issues have pushed departmental teaching review committees to question their current practices in teaching evaluation. Given this, how do educational developers support faculty during this renewal of interest in fair and supportive evaluations of teaching? How can we leverage these critical discussions to further our goals of promoting excellent teaching for student learning? These are incredible conversations, in which faculty are asking key questions: What is effective teaching? How do we recognize it? How is teaching documented? How do we conduct reviews without bias? With many finally heeding the research about bias in student evaluations, faculty need support. This presentation reviews the pressures on teachers this past year, the effects of pausing or changing review processes during Covid, and then provides a map to teaching effectiveness and how it is being received by departments to date.