Peer Review of Teaching

Like peer review of scholarship, peer review of teaching encourages faculty to have scholarly conversations about effective teaching. It contributes to an environment where faculty can feel comfortable trying new approaches and getting feedback for improvement purposes. 

Learner evaluations are an important part of curriculum improvement and faculty feedback in medical education. However, learners are not always the best evaluators, because they often have limited training, can have biases against faculty unrelated to teaching quality and may be unfamiliar with overall curricular goals and values.

Much medical education literature and many professional societies caution institutions against using learner ratings of instruction as the only or best method of evaluating teaching effectiveness. Therefore, IU encourages faculty to provide multiple forms of data to indicate teaching effectiveness in the promotion and tenure process.

Faculty are required to have more than one peer review of teaching over the course of the promotion period. Per the IU Indianapolis Promotion and Tenure Guidelines, “[p]eer review of classroom instruction is most effective when it is based on multiple visits to classes and examination of materials; isolated observations are rarely helpful” (p. 37).

Any faculty member at IU can conduct a peer review of teaching. However, since this could be burdensome, FAPD conducts training for and can facilitate the scheduling of a peer review when no department rep is available.

Per the IU Indianapolis Promotion and Tenure Guidelines, “[r]eview of teaching is a formative activity to facilitate improvement and skill development in teaching. Rank requirements such as those used for external evaluators are not applied to the formative teaching review processes.

Local disciplinary peers can provide essential information and assessment based on observation of the classroom, studio, laboratory, or other learning environments, including those based on technology.

Additionally, local peers outside the discipline can provide an additional perspective of excellence in teaching, including practices in the classroom, teaching materials, and the scholarship of teaching and learning” (p. 42).

Yes! FAPD keeps a list of peer reviewers who have been trained to provide formative feedback on teaching quality and for the promotion and tenure process. 

Request a peer review.

According to the literature on peer review, a high-quality peer review of teaching includes the following elements:

1. Pre-review meeting between the reviewer and reviewee to set goals and agree upon the type of feedback required
2. A review of the reviewee's teaching materials, including learning goals and objectives, lecture notes, activities, presentations, syllabi, assignments and learner work
3. An observation of an actual teaching encounter and/or a review of recorded instruction
4. A post-review meeting between the reviewer and the reviewee to discuss the observation and create an action plan
5. A written summary of the review provided to the reviewee

FAPD strongly recommends that the written summary become the property of the reviewee. To encourage a trusting, supportive relationship between reviewers and reviewees, we will never ask anyone, except for the reviewees themselves, for a copy of written summaries.

IU does not have a standard form, but IU School of Medicine Faculty Affairs and Professional Development offers a template that you can tailor to your needs. In addition to the general form, we offer specific forms for peer reviews in clinical settings and research settings.

We believe that, just as there are many good ways to teach, there are many good ways to evaluate teaching. As such, we offer a peer review of teaching form template, which includes a collection of quality teaching domains and items within each domain. Based on the reviewee's teaching goals and purpose of the peer review, we recommend that the reviewee and reviewer discuss items for review and adjust the form template to best meet relevant needs.

More important than your peer reviews, IU requires you to include a teaching statement in your dossier, summarizing and reflecting on your submitted teaching materials. This statement should include information about how you used your peer reviews of teaching (and other feedback like learner ratings of instruction) to improve upon your teaching practices. More details about the requirements of the teaching section of the dossier are in the IU Indianapolis Promotion and Tenure Guidelines.

Although there is no rank requirement for the reviewer per the IU Indianapolis Promotion and Tenure Guidelines, we recommend that you choose a reviewer who best suits your goals for participating in the peer review process.

That person can be:

1. A faculty colleague from your department
2. A faculty colleague from outside your department
3. Someone from the FAPD list of reviewers
4. A staff member from the IU Indianapolis Center for Teaching and Learning or your local campus teaching and learner center.

Yes, FAPD regularly conducts training sessions for faculty interested in serving as peer reviewers. During these sessions, our team provides future reviewers with helpful materials and support to ensure the peer review process is supportive, rigorous and consistent. In addition to these training sessions, departments can request a workshop to help departments and faculty increase their capacity to conduct high-quality peer reviews of teaching across the institution.

All participants who have completed a peer review training session are invited to become a part of the FAPD team of peer reviewers. To find out when the next training session will be, visit the Events page on this website. If you do not see one listed, you can contact FAPD at fapdd@iu.edu.

Those reviewers who complete two or more peer reviews of teaching per year receive a letter from the dean for their own promotion materials and special invitations to teaching events and programs. 

No. The training is not specific to any one teaching and learning environment, so reviewers may choose the environments in which they feel qualified. FAPD maintains the list of reviewers and their qualified areas to ensure appropriate matches with reviewees.