Peer Review of Teaching

Peer review of teaching is a method of assessing the quality and effectiveness of a faculty member’s teaching practices anywhere that teaching occurs, including:

• On rounds
• In the classroom, simulation center, clinic, operating room or lab
• During journal club or grand rounds
• Anywhere else

As the name suggests, during a peer review, a colleague (another faculty or staff member at Indiana University) reviews your teaching materials and/or observes your teaching, then provides you a written summary of their observation.

During your time as a faculty member at IU School of Medicine, all faculty are encouraged to undergo at least one peer review of teaching.

A peer review is required as part of the promotion and tenure process and could also be used as part of award nominations, or professional society membership or leadership. It is also simply good practice to have a third party assess your teaching methods and provide feedback so you can consistently improve your teaching effectiveness.

Peer review of teaching promotes the healthy practice of having scholarly conversations about effective teaching with your colleagues. It contributes to an environment where faculty can feel comfortable trying new approaches and getting feedback you can use to help improve your teaching.

Learner evaluations (i.e., student evaluations or learner ratings of instruction) are an important part of curriculum improvement and faculty feedback in medical education. However, learners have limited training about effective teaching practices, can have biases against faculty unrelated to teaching quality and may be unfamiliar with overall curricular goals and values. Peers with whom you work closely or who work in other areas of the School of Medicine are better positioned to be effective evaluators.

Also, medical education literature¹ and professional societies² caution institutions against using learner ratings as the only or best method for evaluating teaching effectiveness. Therefore, IU encourages faculty who are going up for promotion or tenure to provide multiple forms of data to indicate teaching effectiveness.

1. Sample source: Cautioning in scholarly literature

2. Sample source: Cautioning by professional societies

As a faculty member, you are required to have more than one peer review of teaching over the course of your promotion period. It’s highly beneficial to have multiple. The more reviews you have over the review period, the more evidence the Promotion & Tenure Committee will have to support your advancement.

The IU Indianapolis Promotion and Tenure Guidelines:

• Recommend that peer review evaluations occur “continuously across the career”
• Emphasize the importance of multiple reviews, saying peer review “of classroom instruction is most effective when it’s based on multiple visits to classes and examination of materials; isolated observations are rarely helpful.”
• State that “peer review of teaching is as important as peer review of research and creative activity.”

Your collective peer reviews form a critical piece of your promotion dossier.

You will be required to submit a summary of your peer reviews and your self-reflection of the feedback you received. In this particular document, what you are being asked to document is a summary of the actual reviews: When the review was done, who was the reviewer, what the learning context was, and what some of the comments or findings from the reviews were.

In addition, you should comment on how you reflected on the findings of these peer reviews: Did they highlight things that were important to you? Did they identify potential opportunities to retool your teaching? And what, if anything, did you do as a result of having these reviews done?

For those being evaluated on teaching as part of the promotion and tenure process, other critical materials include a philosophy of teaching statement and a summary of learner evaluations.  

More details about the requirements of the teaching section of your dossier are included in the IU Indianapolis Promotion and Tenure Guidelines.

Research has identified the following elements of high-quality peer reviews of teaching: 

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

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

Any faculty member or staff member with teaching experience at IU can conduct a peer review of teaching. There are no rank requirements (e.g., full professor) for the peer reviewer, and, while special training is available, it is not required.

Faculty Affairs and Professional Development (FAPD) recommends that you first attempt to find a peer to perform a review of your teaching. 

We recommend that you choose a reviewer who best suits your goals for participating in the peer review process. That person could be:

• A faculty colleague from your department
• A faculty colleague from outside your department
• A staff member from the IU Indianapolis Center for Teaching and Learning or your local campus teaching and learner center.

Peers within your discipline are most closely familiar with the curricular and teaching needs of your learners and can provide essential feedback that might be unique to your department. Peers outside of your discipline can also provide unique feedback, including perspective on teaching practices and materials, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

FAPD offers resources for peer reviewers, including information about the process of conducting a review, peer review forms and peer reviewer training. Training is not required, but many find it helpful to undergo training before conducting a peer review of teaching. 

If you are unable to find a peer to conduct your review or have a unique situation, FAPD can facilitate the scheduling of a review of teaching with a trained peer reviewer. Request a peer review of teaching.

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.

Note that, due to the limited number of trained peer reviewers and a high demand for peer reviews, FAPD recommends that you first attempt to find a colleague who would be willing to perform a review of your teaching, and reach out to us if you need to request a trained reviewer.

Also, we recommend that each department consider identifying individuals who would be interested in becoming trained peer reviewers, then pointing them to the upcoming peer reviewer training session offered by FAPD. Check the events calendar for an upcoming session. (Look under the Teaching header.)

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. Check the events calendar, under the Teaching section, for an upcoming session.

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.

To find out when the next peer reviewer training session will be, visit the Program and Events by Topic page and check for session listings under the Teaching section. If you do not see one listed, you can contact FAPD at fapd@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. 

All participants who have completed a peer review training session are invited to become a part of the FAPD team of peer reviewers.

No. Reviewers may choose the environments in which they feel qualified to perform peer reviews of teaching. For those who complete peer reviewer training, FAPD asks reviewers to identify the areas they feel most qualified to review and will only match them with peer review requests in those areas.

IU does not have a standard form, but IU School of Medicine Faculty Affairs and Professional Development offers templates you can tailor to your needs. 

Our peer review of teaching form template 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 before the review takes place, adjusting the form template to best meet relevant needs.

In addition to the general form, we offer specific forms for peer reviews in clinical settings and research settings.

Faculty and staff who are asked to perform a peer review can find helpful resources — including pre-review and post-review discussion guides, sample completed reviews and more — on our Resources for Peer Review webpage.