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For Reviewers

This section contains the guidelines and resources for peer reviewers.

1. Accepting Peer Review request

Summative Review: once you have been assigned by the VP-Education or nominee to review a promotion/confirmation applicant, you will receive an email notification to accept the review request.
Formative Review: if a colleague chooses you to be the reviewer for their formative review, you will receive an email notification to accept the review request.

2. Pre-review meeting

It is recommended that both the participant and reviewer have a purposeful conversation about the participant’s teaching intentions and practice. This conversation may last around 30-45 minutes.

Please wait for the reviewee to request and arrange for the meeting.

3. Completing peer review report

As a reviewer, you are expected to complete a peer review report that consists of several types of feedback on the four broad areas of practice being observed:

A four-point rating for each section from "not effective" to "very effective"
Written comments for each section
Closing thoughts on the overall strengths of teaching and areas that appear to be in need of development

A good report should help the reviewee identify their teaching strengths and specific areas of improvement, and provide suggestions on improving their teaching practice. Your feedback should be based on factual observations made during the session and specify those examples to enhance the review's usefulness. Remain non-judgemental, impartial, and factual throughout your review.

For both summative and formative review, we encourage you to address your closing comments to the peer rather than write about their practice.

Starting in late 2022, candidates applying for promotion will now only include a summary report rather than the full Peer review report. This summary includes their details, the peer reviewer's name and the closing comments from the Peer review report (see attached). This change was requested so that promotion panels can more quickly get a picture of the applicant’s practice from the peer review.
Sample summative report

4. Reviewer's role summary

5. Examples of feedback

Effective feedback can help the reviewee to identify areas of improvement and refine their teaching approach. It is important that the written comments have a healthy balance of affirmatory statements and constructive feedback that will help in teaching enhancement and professional growth.

Here are three review examples that demonstrate effective feedback. Please take some time to read through them.

Overall strengths of teaching
Really enjoyed reviewing this session Sab. It was not only very interesting, but you made the best use of the webinar forum that you could. The session was clearly structured, kept to time and made space for individual students' voices to be heard and for them to test out their learning. I have highlighted strong effectiveness all the way through this session and, to some extent, the lack of interactivity I observed was almost mostly because of the webinar format. The moodle site learning activities were excellent - so well-scaffolded and then sewn into your session.
Areas that appear to be in need of development
Some ideas to think about:
1. Given the constraints of the webinar for interactivity, could you ask students to start to comment on the posts and questions they see in the chat so as to encourage their interaction with each other. That might also build their evaluative techniques so that they not only post but they comment on what seems right or wrong to them. Could you also stop at times to say - 'what are your questions at this point' - so that they have some open space to engage with you rather than only answering in response to something you pose (notwithstanding that what you are posing is great).
2. Encouragement and personalisation - you do a lovely job of recognising students' names as they use the chat. I would like to reflect to you that there is space to personalise and encourage a little more, especially as online learning can tend to feel less personalised at a time when we need to make connections. So perhaps a starting comment that asks them to post in the chat - what was your highlight this week or something positive you experienced this week... something like this. Perhaps at the end, you could comment on their engagement in this session - I can see that you are engaging with the pre-work and making good connections to this... You might want to consolidate this a little more ie personalising the learning a little more. These are all subtle comments I make on top of a very effective session which I think can excel with a layer of more encouragement and personalisation. Another idea is to ask them to rate on a scale how much they feel they know about the topic at the start and get them to do it at the end so they reflect to themselves and to you their progress after this class and their pre-work.
3. Thank you for letting me review your practice Sab. It was strong, effective and engaging. Hope you find these comments helpful for reflecting on your practice.
Overall strengths of teaching
A clearly structured lesson - the logic was clear, the scaffolding was clear. You were reassuring in tone and friendly in approach. The students appears to be fully engaged throughout because you had planned active learning experiences all through. I also want to note how well you incorporate the TAs in the session to really optimise the structure of the session and how this, and the TAs themselves, contribute to the students' learning. The notes above reflect the things I observed and thought about as I reviewed the session. I found it to be a very well-designed session, active in its orientation, effectively executed and student- centred and warm in its orientation.
Areas that appear to be in need of development
Three areas for your consideration Beverley: The first relates to more deliberate set up of the room at the start so that students are ready to undertake the learning you had planned. This means finding a way to group students from the start so that people will not be sitting at tables alone. You certainly asked if they were okay on their own but they will never move voluntarily, especially once sitting and settled, so it is good to do this from the start (adopting a technique to assign tables in some way). The second relates to your approach to questioning. While your tone is approachable and reassuring, you did go between sending messages that you were 'checking they had done the prework' and perhaps giving them the sense that you were testing their knowledge. In this context, they will feel reluctant to have a go at answering. More open questions - what, to you, are the key things to think about here, what do you think are the outlying results here... etc, could help them be more willing to have a go and answer. The last relates to tying your case study approach to the questions you framed for their learning and application - if you are working with a case study, build your questions from the case (around Diana) rather than have them abstracted from it. That reinforces the authenticity of the task and the learning and also may help the logic of their thinking - consider Diana and THEN extrapolate to the more generalised processes underpinning their answers.
I really enjoyed observing this session for the excellence I saw practised by you and your team. It was quite remarkable to think you had never met the students until this week, week 12, and yet your approach was warm and relational and it felt as if you knew your students. I was concerned that I would not be able to keep up with the content as it was not in my area yet I did (almost)- testament to the excellent scaffolding of learning in the session. Thanks for allowing me to observe Beverley.
Overall strengths of teaching
You provided a good mix of learning materials across Moodle and your lectures. I found myself watching both videos and looking at the Moodle materials. The lectures involve clear presentations with engaging slides. The animations were great. I think there is scope to make more than the sum of the learning materials you provide in a few ways and I will highlight some ideas for this in the next section below.
Areas that appear to be in need of development
Four suggestions:
1. Try to build more of a relationship with the students in the way you 'talk' to and 'engage' with them both in the lecture and on Moodle. I understand that the sessions were asynchronous and you were not in the virtual room together but there are ways to engage with students, even if they are not there. You already demonstrate a tone of support in the way you present but there is scope to teach as if students were there, to talk with them by weaving together your Moodle materials and the lectures so that they are clear about how they all work together but, more so, so that they feel they are interacting with you and you with them.
2. This point builds from the one above. I think there is scope to build in more interaction with students even if they are not there in the room ie you with them. ie Have a think about, try to work out 3 things that... after this lecture, go back to the quiz in moodle and see if you can....Use links in your slides for them to post answers to questions you ask so that they can view others' answers - getting a sense of their peers would be good too.
3. Learning outcomes - The lectures were missing an outline of your intentions in the lectures. As a learner watching them, I did not know where you were taking me from the start and what I was going to learn by coming along with you. This is important to add in as cognitive 'handrails' for learners so that they stay with you. Can I suggest that you seek out support from Learning Designers on how to frame these for your lectures and your Moodle site - you want to go beyond 'understand' in your outcomes and you can even add in ones such as 'apply' even if the students are not with you in the virtual lecture. It is great to see you restate these at the end. Here you want to learn how to frame them as outcomes rather than as a summary of content but their appearance there was perfect. You want to add in the learning intentions for the session at the start and frame them in such a way so that learners can be focused on what they should aim for by listening to you.
4. Narrate the learning a little more across the Moodle site and lectures. Weave together how the materials fit together and share with them, encourage them to look at other things and explain why - there are opportunities in the lecture to do just that rather than to focus on the lecture content. There is also a need to do that precisely because you DO provide other learning activities for them on Moodle which is great. This will allow you to optimise the package of what you create rather than leave it up to them solely if, how, when and why they engage with the full set.
Thank you for letting me engage with your teaching Janice.
Overall strengths of teaching
Rachel created a positive environment that promotes the achievement of desired learning outcomes. Students were fully engaged in the activities.
Areas that appear to be in need of development
- Develop good questioning techniques and use online polls for improved student engagement.
- Link pre-class activities to in-class and post-class activities.
- Generic one-liner feedback without any specifics
- The promotion panel has no information about the session or the teaching approaches used by the reviewee
- The reviewee has no information about the things that were done well
- Suggestions for development are not reflective of any observation and offer very little guidance for improvement
- No/little information on how the effectiveness for each area was inferred
- Provide specific and usable feedback based on observations. For example: “I was amazed by how quickly your students responded to questions and engaged in discussion."
- Use a combined observation and suggestion approach instead of providing a "to-do" list. For example: "Did you notice that the students seemed to be somewhat lethargic during the second half of the lecture? Have you thought about interrupting the lecture briefly every now and then with a small, active task, like asking students to summarize what you’ve said so far?”
- Describe the session of observation as objectively as possible, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses observed.

Recommended reading

Five steps to becoming a better peer reviewer by Vicki K. Carter

Education and Training Academy