Peer Review of Teaching and Instructional Support
The Peer Review of Teaching and Instructional Support Working Group, a sub-committee of the Teaching and Learning Committee of Senate, recommends the process outlined below for peer review. We also invite departments to adapt this process and the associated forms and templates as appropriate for their own contexts.
If you are new to peer review of teaching and instructional support or are undertaking peer review as part of a performance review process as outlined in the Collective Agreement, please contact your chair for assistance with the process and to determine if your department recommends use of specific form(s).
The Process
Peer review support is offered for and resources are selected by faculty
- Via a face-to-face or virtual workshop and/or corresponding Moodle site
Review is initiated
- See Articles 6 and 7 in the Collective Agreement for information about required peer reviews; however, peer review is encouraged outside of these requirements as a means to improve professional practice
Reviewee and reviewer(s) are matched
- Ideally, faculty reviewees drive their own peer review processes and are involved in reviewer selection. Any faculty member can serve as a reviewer, but often department chairs can help connect faculty for the purposes of review
- Depending on the purpose of and reviewee's goal(s) for the review, the reviewer could be selected based on one or more of the following criteria:
- Subject matter expertise,
- Understanding of reviewee's context,
- Pedagogical expertise and ways of teaching, and/or
- Ways of knowing/epistemological knowledge.
Reviewer and reviewee meet to discuss the review
- This conversation should include the context for and goals of the review as well as the scope of what will be reviewed
- Please see templates below for some available options; you may revise templates to fit your specific goals and context; CELT can help you revise or create templates
Review occurs
- Depending on the scope of the review, this may include a face-to-face class, a virtual synchronous class, a virtual asynchronous class, Moodle site elements, assignments, course outlines, workshops, or other instructional support faculty activities
Reviewer and reviewee meet to debrief
- See below for a list of prompts that may be used to guide the debriefing
Reviewer composes and submits the report to the reviewee
- Please see templates below for some available options developed at TRU by various departments and a few adapted from other institutions; you may revise templates to fit your specific goals and context; CELT can help you revise or create templates
Reviewee reflects on report and creates and implements an action plan
- Please see templates below for some available options; you may revise templates to fit your specific goals and context; CELT can help you revise or create templates
If you’d like to discuss peer review further, contact us at celt@tru.ca.
Forms and Templates
Please see templates below for some available options; you may revise templates to fit your specific goals and context. CELT can help you revise or create templates.
Pre-review Meeting
Peer Observation/review
- Instructional Designer Peer Review
- Narrative Classroom Observation Template
- Face-to-Face or Blended Delivery Peer Review Template
- Virtual delivery review form
- Example of instructional support form (from consent tea)
- Thompson Rivers University Online Peer Review
- Traditional Classroom Visitation form from TRU
- TRU Hunt and Mills Classroom Observation
- TRU Learning Design and Innovations Department Teaching Behaviours form
- TRU Library forms September 2015
- Library Tutorial Review Form
- TRU Peer Observation form from Tourism
