[Spring Workshop 2021] Re-imagining Peer Evaluation: An Inclusive Summative Peer Review of Online Teaching Framework
11:10 – 12:00 pm Wednesday May 26, 2021
Isabeau Iqbal and Afsaneh Sharif
Isabeau Iqbal is an educational developer who supports faculty members in growing and documenting their educational leadership. She works at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at UBC’s Vancouver campus.
Afsaneh Sharif is a skilled Instructional Designer, e-Learning Specialist and Project Manager. She is interested in implementing research findings into practice and works closely with faculty members to ensure that course/program design and development meet best practice standards.
Session Description
The summative peer review of teaching elicits strong emotional reactions among people reviewed and those reviewing their colleagues. Emotions include dread, disenfranchisement, and distrust (Iqbal, 2014).
Summative peer review of teaching , defined as informed collegial judgement about teaching intended to aid in making personnel decisions, is used in higher education to add rigour to teaching evaluation and provide a more holistic picture of a faculty member’s instruction (Chism, 2007). The massive changes brought about by COVID required us to re-imagine the summative process, with close attention to online teaching and course design, and inclusivity.
Drawing from literature on effective online teaching (e.g. Bates, 2019) and peer review of teaching (e.g., Tobin, Mandernack & Taylor, 2015), we created an open-sourced template that any unit (i.e., department, Faculty,school) can adapt in order to develop their own inclusive practices and guidelines for the summative peer review of online teaching. Our intention was to create a space and structure where review and mentorship happens for good impact.
In this session, we help build capacity around effective summative peer review of online teaching using the framework. We recognize the flawed and imperfect nature of PRT (Peer review of Teaching), yet believe that the process has potential for enhancing evaluation processes and the quality of teaching and learning. We invite the participants’ voices to share about their own peer review initiatives and to consider how such an initiative might be adapted to their own context.