Faculty peer review: Easier said than done, Bernstein says

Faculty peer review is a subject that has generated a lot of interest on the UW campus, but implementing useful, systematic processes informed by successful practice has been difficult, according to Jody Nyquist, director of the Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR). That's why CIDR, together with the Graduate School and the Faculty Council on Instructional Quality, sponsored a visit recently by Dan Bernstein, a nationally recognized expert on peer review.

Bernstein, an award-winning professor of psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, gave a presentation at the Quarterly Forum on Teaching and Learning and also met with various faculty groups during a three-day visit that included trips to both the UW Bothell and UW Tacoma campuses.

Peer review is not “the dreaded visit from the chair, who sits in the back of the room and takes notes in your class,” Bernstein assured those who attended the forum. The type of peer review he described is, rather, a means of faculty development, a chance to improve one's teaching by working with a peer.

Bernstein has participated in the American Association for Higher Education's (AAHE) Peer Review Project for the past four years, and also has initiated a project on his own campus. The methodology he described, he told his listeners, was created by Pat Hutchings, senior fellow and Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who directed the AAHE project.

“In this model you choose your own partners,” Bernstein said. “You choose someone in your own field with whom you will work reciprocally. That way you know the person who will be evaluating your teaching is someone you respect and that he or she understands the material.”

The partners do three activities together; they look at course content, use of class time and student learning.

In the first activity one partner prepares a copy of a course syllabus, with a one to two page memo explaining why he made the decision to include the material he did, why assignments were given and so on. The second partner reads the syllabus and memo and responds to them with his own memo. Then the partners get together to talk about it.

“We have the partners write things first because in my experience faculty members take more care in writing, and so the quality of the thought tends to be higher,” Bernstein said.

Questions that can be answered in this part of the process, according to Bernstein, are: Is the material up-to-date? Is the material appropriate to the class? Do the reading and other assignments match the stated goals?

In the second activity, one of the partners attends three of the other's class sessions, and during that time agrees to do all the work the students are doing. He or she then writes a memo describing how well class time was used to achieve course goals. Again, the partners meet to talk about it.

Questions that can be answered in this part of the process are: Is the teacher distributing time according to plan? Are the students engaged during the class? Do class activities contribute to the stated goals?

In the final activity, one of the partners presents examples of assignments and exams and explains what these evaluations were intended to measure. He or she also provides examples of student work—from every level of achievement—along with instructor comments and grades. The partner then comments on whether the quality of the students' work seems adequate and whether the students are meeting the instructors' goals. Again, the two discuss the matter.

The questions that can be answered in this part of the process are: Is student performance appropriate to the instructor's goal? Are enough students demonstrating competence?

Bernstein thinks the third activity is particularly important because of its emphasis on student learning. “That, after all, is the bottom line,” he said.

Materials from the three processes also can be included in a teaching portfolio, Bernstein pointed out. “One math teacher on our campus made changes in his course as a result of this process, so he put his original plan into the portfolio, then showed how the feedback he received caused him to change things and what the result was in terms of student learning.”

It is through the portfolio that peer review can be connected to evaluation, Bernstein said. “If the committee evaluating a professor can look at his or her teaching portfolio, it gives them another view of what that professor is doing in the classroom. It's an important complement to the student voice that you get from student evaluations.”

He believes, however, that peer review for faculty development should be kept separate from review for evaluation. “I think ideally we should alternate between development and accountability,” he said. “This process I've been describing is a kind of 'shielded peer consultation.' You pick someone you like, someone to whom you can admit the ways you need to grow. That's not going to happen with someone who's evaluating you.”

CIDR is ready to assist any department interested in putting the procedures Bernstein described in place, Nyquist says. The center has written materials on peer review available, and also will consult with departments to design discipline-specific approaches. For more information, contact CIDR at 543-6588. ¶

Nancy Wick