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Formative Observations from the Teaching Center

Formative Observations from the Teaching Center

Observation reports provide instructors with a summary of teaching practices observed by a teaching consultant during 1-3 class sessions and feedback that can be used to improve teaching and learning. Data is collected using an adaptable, Teaching Center-developed tool based on research-proven teaching best practices discussed in How Learning Works (Ambrose et. al., 2023) and What Inclusive Instructors Do (Addy et al., 2021). (NOTE: To access these articles, you must be logged in or log into the University Library System.)

Observation reports should not be considered evidence of overall teaching effectiveness. The purpose of teaching consultants conducting observations is to provide feedback to inform improvements to teaching.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • You are experiencing a teaching and learning challenge (like student disengagement, for example), and you want a teaching consultant to come to your class to see if they can help you pinpoint the cause and help you work on a solution.
  • You want to continuously improve your teaching and schedule observations at regular intervals as a teaching “check up”.
  • You have specific long-term teaching goals (like implementing problem based learning in your courses) that you would like to work toward with a teaching consultant. Observations are one way that you check progress towards successfully achieving those goals.
  • You want to try an innovative new teaching strategy or tool and would like a teaching consultant to observe to let you know how it went and how you might improve things for next time.

Your discussions, communications, and reports with and from teaching consultants are confidential.

Initial Consultation: If you would like to request an observation, contact Teaching Support at teaching@pitt.edu. A teaching consultant assigned as a liaison to your department will respond to your email within a week to arrange an initial consultation. During the initial consultation, the consultant will talk to you about your course and teaching and learning challenges and goals. You can request that the consultant focus on particular things during observations (student engagement or inclusive teaching methods, for instance) if you would like. The consultant will likely ask you to bring copies of your course syllabus or other course materials to review.

You will have the option of selecting an informal, one-time observation or a formal observation consisting of three observations scheduled over 1-2 semesters. If you choose an informal observation, a consultant will email you a concise summary of feedback, which they will discuss with you during the observation debrief. If you choose a formal observation, the teaching consultant will send you summaries of feedback for each class session they observe, then develop an observation report documenting strengths, areas for improvement, and changes to teaching over time. Observation feedback and reports are confidential and formative; they should not be used in faculty evaluations. At the end of the initial consultation, you will schedule observations on mutually agreed upon dates.

Observations: The teaching consultant will attend 1-3 of your class sessions on the agreed upon dates and use the Teaching Center’s internally developed observation tool to document what they observe. After each observation, the consultant will send you one page of feedback.

Observation Debrief: The consultant will meet with you after each observation to debrief and discuss the summary, their recommendations, and to offer specific strategies to work on. If you have chosen to have formal observations, the teaching consultant will send you a formal observation report synthesizing information from all observations within two weeks of the last observation. Like other communication with your consultant, the final observation report is confidential.

Although the observations occur during your regularly scheduled class times, you should plan to meet with your teaching consultant before the observations and after each one and to devote additional planning time to using feedback to improve your teaching. The amount of time will vary, but plan for at least an hour per meeting, an hour to review your consultant’s feedback, and additional time to plan how to use the teaching consultant’s feedback.

All teaching consultants are expert teachers with years of experience assisting faculty in developing courses and curriculum and in teaching their own higher education courses in various disciplines. They may not teach in your discipline, which means that they are not qualified to comment on the content of your course, however, they have the pedagogical expertise to assist you with course and learning activity design, improving student interaction and engagement, implementing equitable teaching methodologies in your classroom, and a variety of different pedagogical techniques to improve your teaching experience and your students’ learning experiences.

Resources and Readings for Classroom Observations

Developed using:

  • Ambrose, Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2023). How learning works: Eight research-based principles for smart teaching (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
  • Addy., T.M., Dube, D., Mitchell, K.A., & SoRelle, M. (2021). What inclusive instructors do: Principles and practices for excellence in college teaching (1st ed.). Stylus Publishing, LLC.
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