Peer Review of Teaching: Considering the intellectual work behind the performance

1. Peer Review of Teaching:Considering the intellectual work behind the performance Dan Bernstein, djb@ku.edu 25 October 2002 NLII Chicago

2. Premise: Teaching can include serious intellectual work • Identifying what knowledge, ideas, and skills are worth learning • Designing instructional plan and activities • Developing opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding • Evaluating the effectiveness of the course in achieving goals • Engaged with varying degrees of investment

3. Building a community of intellectual work • Course portfolio is learning-centered • Bill Cerbin made a prototype, evolved by Pat Hutchings and others • Represents intentional efforts to produce understanding and proficiency • Scholarly reflection on the relation among goals, practices, and results • Fellowship program guides the development of this work in steps • Straightforward peer interaction w/ inherent value to faculty

4. Exchange of three brief memos • Decisions about intellectual content and goals • Overall plan for learning in and out of class • Give examples of actual student performance • Local peer reads and responds to intellectual content • Combine them into a coherent, reflective account of the course • The depth and breadth of student understanding

5. Generative Impact of Writing • Refine through comment from private audience • Conducted in a private web working space for participating faculty (UNL Blackboard) • Reasonable to allow an academic year • Act of writing produces insights • Experience of Marcela Raffaelli • Experience of Rick Bevins and Dan Bernstein

6. Represent the work to the community • Create hypertext/pdf versions online • Scholarly work is publicly accessible • Others can build their own practice from it • Peer reviewed for quality by arm’s length observers • Experience of three external reviews • Cal Garbin and Rick Bevins and Dan Bernstein

7. Congruent with Scholarship Assessed • Initial portfolio is a benchmark of understanding • Later versions inquire into promoting achievement • Clear goals, methods, results, and reflection • Inquiry version addresses high-end SoTL vision • Much intentional work is often lost • Small marginal effort yields intellectual record

8. What does it mean to have a problem in teaching? • Needed to achieve deeper understanding • Also wanted to keep high percentage of students achieving at the top level • Consider analysis by Randy Bass • Unpacks the term “problem” • Reframe it as an intellectual question • Inquiry situated in the act of teaching

9. Challenges encountered • Need plan to provide occasions for writing • Fellowships and reduction of service are important and show institutional commitment • Need to find an electronic voice for authors • Reviews are asymmetrically positive • Need to follow Bass’ analysis of “problem” • Process must provide useful interactions for teachers to sustain their interest

10. Relates to Institutional Concerns • Discussion of measuring learning outcomes • Portfolio is intellectual work focused on evidence of student understanding • Clear ownership of process by teachers • Unit performance emerges from courses • Sum of understanding evident in coursework • Available for external review • Electronic forms make easy communication

11. Will writing course portfolios become a self-sustaining activity? • Already know it generates insights and progress in teaching for writers and readers • Writing course portfolios can generate satisfying interactions within a community • Need to maintain a regular audience of readers who respond intelligently to portfolios • Online presence of e-portfolios may promote audience and interactions needed to support a community of discourse on quality teaching

12. For Information on Peer Review: • Project website: http://www.unl.edu/peerrev/ • Detailed rationale for external review of the intellectual work in teaching • Examples of guidelines that have been useful in beginning these conversations • A few examples of varied portfolios • Contact us: PeerReview@UNL.edu or (402) 472-1753