Assessment of Teaching Plan Exemplars
Katz Graduate School of Business/College of Business Administration
Highlights: Katz/CBA has integrated assessment of teaching with curricular reform efforts and has developed robust faculty development programs, including a graduate student teaching training program and peer-to-peer mentoring, to drive improvement of teaching. Katz/CBA has also developed a school-wide communication campaign and implemented strategies to increase students’ OMET teaching survey response rates.
School of Dental Medicine
Highlights: The School of Dental Medicine’s program-specific approach integrates assessment of teaching with curricular review and assessment of student learning to maximize the efficiency of data collection and use. Dental Medicine has also expanded the collection of student feedback to include alumni surveys and assessment of mentoring. Finally, as a school that has been performing robust assessment of teaching for six years, Dental Medicine has iteratively improved assessment practices regularly using faculty feedback.
School of Education
Highlights: The School of Education has aligned its definition of teaching effectiveness and assessment of teaching practices with the school’s mission, which emphasizes equity, justice, and anti-racism. The School of Education has designed an assessment of teaching process that promotes reflection while allowing faculty the flexibility to determine which sources of evidence best demonstrate the quality of their teaching. The school has also revised OMET student opinion of teaching survey questions to better capture student feedback on equitable and inclusive teaching practices.
Swanson School of Engineering
Highlights: The School of Engineering has developed a system that links assessment of teaching with faculty development. In addition to its robust workshop offerings, the school has created teaching and mentoring bootcamps, a session focusing on reflection and communicating about teaching work in faculty evaluation processes, and a badging system for teaching skill sets like active learning and teaching technology.
School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Highlights: The School of Health and Rehabilitation began the process of revising assessment of teaching by composing OMET student opinion of teaching questions that align with their school’s definition of teaching effectiveness. Part of this involved conducting student focus groups to determine how students interpreted draft questions and which questions they perceived as most useful. Engaging students in assessment of teaching planning gives students the opportunity to help shape a process or tool that is ultimately intended to help improve their learning experiences.
School of Pharmacy
Highlights: The School of Pharmacy is conducting meta assessment on a pilot of two potential faculty peer review processes, a peer observation and a “Classroom Clinic,” to determine which method has the greatest impact and which faculty prefer. The meta assessment engages faculty in the process of selecting assessment methods and allows the school to make a data-informed decision about which of the two methods to use moving forward.
The Classroom Clinic is a unique way to conduct peer review because it involves faculty giving short teaching demonstrations to colleagues, then discuss and receive feedback on their demonstrations. In addition to creating a forum to demonstrate best practices or receive feedback on a newly planned teaching strategy, the Classroom Clinic could help sustain informal peer teaching mentoring and discussions.