Please find the original PDF regarding Peer Teaching Evaluations in ESS here. The information below is directly from the document but includes headings for organizational purposes.
Purpose
According to the University Handbook, collegial evaluations serve two purposes:
- To produce positive benefits for the individual faculty member and for the unity by identifying the individual’s particular teaching contributions, by sharing teaching knowledge among colleagues, and by the improvement of teaching.
- To provide material for evaluation in merit, reappointment, and promotion/tenure reviews, Faculty must periodically arrange for collegial evaluations of their teaching.
Evaluators can be any rank, lecturers or tenure-track. You may not have a student write and submit a collegial evaluation, but statements by students can be included within a collegial evaluation, if an evaluator so chooses.
Collegial evaluation reports can take many forms and proceed in many ways, but, unless there is a compelling reason not to do so (e.g., an individual only taught abroad in a given year under another unit’s auspices), a report should concentrate on one class taught under an ESS designation (or cross listed or withered with ESS).
Finally, the department encourages the active involvement of the individual being reviewed in the evaluation process. For this reason, collegial evaluations are not confidential documents. Reviewees have access to them, and if an evaluator does not provide a reviewee with a copy, they can request one from the Main Office.
Schedule
The frequency of evaluations depends on rank.
- Every year for Assistant Professors and Lecturers
- At least every three years for Associate Professors, Professors, Senior Lecturers, and Principal Lecturers.
Process
The Center for Teaching and Learning recommends that a collegial evaluation proceed in the following manner:
Step 1: Meet to Clarify Goals
The reviewee describes the course and may share course materials (such as syllabi and course website) to provide context for the observation. What elements of the course helps students learn? What are the challenges? What kind of feedback will the faculty member find most useful?
Step 2: Agree on a Protocol for Teaching Observation
Decide how many times will the reviewer observe and for what period of time, and discuss your teaching goals, the type of feedback that would be most useful and what aspects of your teaching you would like the reviewer to focus on. Lastly, communicate what you hope to gain from the experience and any purposes, in addition to feedback on pedagogy.
Step 3: Follow up with a Conversation
The observer describes what they saw and speaks, if possible, to the faculty member’s specific questions. The conversation focuses on observed effective practice, open-ended questions, and the faculty member’s goals.
Templates & Forms
- Peer Teaching Evaluation (pdf) – This is to help instructors and reviewers have clear guidelines on the process. The topics and questions may not all need to be addressed but are provided to help guide the process.
- Collegial Teaching Evaluation Form (pdf; word document) – Updated Dec. 2025