In my School, as in many institutions, we have a system of peer
observation of teaching, whereby lecturers have one of their lecture
sessions reviewed by a colleague. However, the management of this has
thrown up some difficulties. At one time, we had a small group of senior
staff who did all the evaluations. However, given the size of the School
this was quite a high workload for the reviewers involved.
In the past year, we adopted a system whereby every lecturer evaluates
one of their colleagues (and hence is evaluated themselves), and I
oversee this process. But because people teach at different points in
the year and need to coordinate with each other when observations will
take place, it means that I have ended up with a rather onerous task of
continually monitoring who's done what and when, and issuing reminders
at various intervals.
Has anyone found a satisfactory method of peer observation that is easy
to manage?
I am contemplating the possibility of having a technician video 5-minute
segments of lecturers. These segments would then be distributed for
review among a small panel of senior colleagues. Those being reviewed
would also have the opportunity to view the clips of themselves - this
is, of course, a common learning technique in sports (sportspeople can
spot errors in their own performance when they view it on film, even
though they were previously unaware of these). I think such an approach
would be both effective and take up less time for the lecturers
involved. I would be interested to know what others think.
David
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Dr David Hardman
Principal Lecturer in Learning Development
Phone: 020 7320 1256
Associate Editor, Journal of Economic Psychology
Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidkhardman
Teaching Learning Assessment: http://tla.wikidot.com
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Judgment and Decision Making textbook blog:
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