The teaching reviews look great. One suggestion: when a reviewer is coming into a faculty member's class, find out the objectives for that particular class session, what preceded that class and what will follow. Joanne -----Original Message----- From: Greenberg, James Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 1:47 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Teaching Breakfast Agenda for Meeting of April 3 Tbers, Our next meeting is not until April 3 at 8 am in Morris Hall but I wanted to get the agenda to you early so you could think it over. Back in December of 2000, Dr. Jim Mills of our Geography Department presented a proposal for Faculty Peer Teaching Reviews to the TB. This is an idea the group has talked about a number of times over the years. Dr. Rothenberg has offered to try and get something like what Jim proposed started. We would like to talk this over at our next meeting. For those of you that can't find your copy here it is: Proposal Faculty Peer Teaching Reviews Submitted by Jim Mills, Department of Geography to Members of the Teaching Breakfast Group, December 2000. Rationale and Description This is a proposal to improve the quality of teaching at SUCO. The intent is to provide a non-threatening mechanism for faculty members to have other faculty members give them feedback and ideas on how to improve their teaching. Despite our many statements regarding the importance of quality instruction, we don't spend a lot of time talking to each other about how to do this. Specifically, faculty members rarely have the opportunity to receive feedback on their teaching, especially on an informal basis. Teaching is certainly a factor during term contract renewal, tenure, and promotion. However, the basis of the review at those times is largely based on teaching loads, student evaluations, and letters from other members of their departments. Such information might serve its purposes. However, it gives the instructor in the trenches little detailed information on the quality of their teaching and not much in the way of constructive ways to improve. Certainly, the process does little to create a shared sense of mission and direct communication between faculty members. This proposal might be a way to address this situation. We can develop a faculty directed program that provides direct feedback to any faculty member requesting input on teaching style, classroom performance, syllabi, and other aspects of teaching. Faculty might welcome peers reviews, especially if they knew that the comments and feedback would not go into their files or any criticisms used against them in considerations of merit, promotion, or tenure. As a faculty, such a program might also give external reviewers, administrators, and the general public a positive message. It might also have the effect of keeping such matters under our own control, rather than being mandated from Albany or elsewhere. Organization The program could be set up as follows: 1) A pool of faculty members interested in participating in such a program is developed. It should be entirely voluntary. A coordinator would be needed. 2) The process would be initiated by a request from an individual faculty member for a review, submitted to the coordinator. The person requesting a review would write a statement indicating what kind of feedback is desired and might include the following information: a) course syllabus (or syllabi) and any additional comments about the syllabus or course for the review team b) any difficulties or challenges being experienced in the course or with teaching in general c) areas that faculty member specifically wants to improve upon d) whether or not they want faculty members from related disciplines or withspecific expertise to conduct the review 3) The coordinator arranges for team of two to three members and a team leader from the pool to respond to the request. 4) The team leader contacts the faculty member and they jointly decide on a course of action. This could be as simple as one meeting, or might involve in-class observation, video-taping, or other actions. 5) Once the review is completed, the team gives the faculty member constructive feedback on ways to improve the course or teaching in general. This feedback would be confidential, and members of the review committee must agree that it will not be used in any formal evaluations. The faculty member receiving the feedback, however, could choose to use the review process to justify that they have taken the initiative to improve their teaching when submitting their own faculty activity reports, term contract renewals, merit requests, and tenure applications. 6) The faculty member who receives the review should be asked to participate as a reviewer for others. Basic Principles of the Program (draft) 1) We are all good teachers. That is why we are here. The purpose of the program is to make us better teachers, share information and perspectives, and to promote a sense of collegiality. 2) Being a better teacher is an on-going process. 3) Everybody has different teaching styles. Anyone participating in the program should be aware that one style might be good for one instructor, and not so good for another. Nevertheless, we can all learn from one another and perhaps there are methods,techniques and approaches that would work well for us that we just were not aware of or haven't had the time to work on. People doing reviews might well learn as much as people requesting reviews. It might be a good idea to develop a set of readings and other resources that faculty members could use. 4) We all have limited amounts of time. The process should be run efficiently and not make inordinate demands on any participating members. 5) Academic freedom is valued. We are not in the business of determining course content. **** End of Document. Mr. James B. Greenberg Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center Milne Library SUNY College at Oneonta Oneonta, New York 13820 email: [log in to unmask] phone: 607-436-2701 "Ignorance is curable, stupidity lasts forever"