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

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Peer Review of TeachingConsidering the
intellectual work behind the performance

• Dan Bernstein, djb_at_ku.edu
• 25 October 2002
• NLII Chicago

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 arms length
  observers
• Experience of three external reviews
• Cal Garbin and Rick Bevins and Dan Bernstein

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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_at_UNL.edu or (402)
  472-1753