Archive for February 9th, 2012
Peer review of teaching looms
Having settled into a new term, and having done a lot of analysis about how peer review of teaching can work effectively online, soon I shall be in the spotlight.
Or the firing line.
I’ve finalized the “observation” form that my colleagues will use to evaluate my “in-class” performance. Here‘s a copy if you’re interested. It’s structured as follows:
Activity: since synchronous sessions are the exception, instead this focuses on a unit. In my course a unit is a week, so it’s relatively tidy.
General “orientation” materials in the LMS site: generally I don’t create syllabi for online courses: the site is the syllabus. But there is always a Course Introduction module that is a leiving syllabi. Reviewing that is part of the pre-observation work.
Activity specific: Very similar to an observation of a face-to-face (F2F) “lesson”
Instructor role: In particular, the nature and tone of student-instructor interactions
Learning technologies: Not all online courses leverage things beyond web pages, readings and discussion forums. Mine do–but I’m keen for someone else to give me some perspective on how I leverage LTs in my online course. Tools are tools, not toys, after all..
Assessment: Will walk them through my grade book and assessment rubrics.
Summary: I think it’s important to have an overall “capstone” bottom-line question. For this round its ” Overall, the quality of instruction for this activity was: Problematic/Adequate/Good/Very Good/Excellent.
The observations are scheduled for 20 February. I’m doing one of two synchronous sessions that week, so it’s one where I’m using a broader range of pedagogical tools and approaches.