Happy February from the Provost’s Teaching Fellows!
This month’s Teaching Tips revolve around the upcoming Texas Teach-Up and peer observation of teaching. Many academic units have various requirements surrounding teaching observations. Peer teaching observations are often tied to promotion and tenure processes and can induce stress rather than provide insight or growth. However, peer observation has proven benefits for both the observer and the observed, especially when evaluations and heightened stakes are removed. Texas Teach-Up is an opportunity to observe instructors from every corner of the University and gain insight into their pedagogical practices, and is a great example of non-evaluative observations that focus primarily on reflection.
Considerations for how to incorporate Peer Observation into your pedagogy:
Observing your fellow instructors is a great way to refresh some of your teaching practices. Sometimes observing other instructors is the best way to inject new life into some of your teaching practices. Seeing how other instructors connect with students, approach material, and utilize the classroom setting can be more valuable than any single observation on your own course. Texas Teach-Up has the added benefit of offering courses from nearly every college and school, which means you can observe instructors from outside your discipline—which can be even more impactful than observing peers you know.
Asking someone to observe you in a non-evaluative manner is helpful for generating personal reflection. Decrease the anxiety surrounding your required observations by asking a trusted colleague to give a teaching observation outside of required contexts. Another way to do this is to sign-up for Texas Teach-Up when it’s offered! You’ll get a variety of instructors excited to observe and help you workshop any ideas for the classroom.
Workshop with trusted/reliable students about what’s working and not working in a course. Getting student input can be so helpful for instructors. Students often have great ideas about what might be useful – and they’ve had contact with a variety of teaching styles and tools during college; they might have a great option for making content accessible, making your job (and theirs!) a little easier. You can utilize Canvas or Qualtrics for feedback options. Mid-semester is a great time to get this feedback and start incorporating it into your pedagogical practices.
While inviting observation can be nerve-wracking, it’s often a great way to quickly refresh and improve our teaching. Rarely do our practices need a complete overhaul, but these opportunities for growth can give the change we need to impact our students and our own relationship to our instruction ideologies.
Hook ‘em!
