Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

We have found that peers who were trained to observe others, consistently provide more detailed and accurate feedback. This feedback is essential in continuing to develop both individual teaching skills and raising the collective level of awareness about best practices across the curriculum. Our university developed a certified peer observation process (CPO) with the idea of creating a community of learners where we learn from each other. Trained peer observers can help to reduce the level of subjectivity and bias so common in peer reviews of teaching to provide a more valuable, informed, evidence-based review. When done as a part of a program that has a clear criterion and a developmental focus, peer observations can have many benefits. For instance, they can improve teaching, develop collegiality among faculty, introduce faculty to new perspectives on teaching, increase confidence to teach and learn more about teaching, transform educational perspectives, encourage purposeful reflection on teaching, and bring teaching practices out into the open to be shared among teachers from different disciplines. Surveys of those who have observed highlight the learning and collegiality that is created as part of this process. We will discuss the overall CPO process, including training, our pre-observation conversations, the classroom or online observation, the post-observation conversations, and the informal follow-up visit. In addition, we will highlight the training process for CPOs and our continued efforts to calibrate among CPOs. This interactive workshop will engage participants in reviewing a short teaching video-clip and working with participants to rate the observation.