TEP and UO Online offer a peer review template as a resource (pdf, Word document with checkable boxes, or an accessible Word document). You can use it to:

• guide the review of any course, regardless of modality (in person, asynchronous online, etc). 
• recognize teaching practices that align with professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed standards. 
• structure specific, collegial conversations between instructors. 
• prompt self-reflection. 

Depending on unit policy, peer reviewers might submit the completed Peer Review Template itself as the peer review; alternatively, the template might inform a separate written report.  

Interspersed through the template are partial inventories of teaching practices that are professional, inclusive, and research-informed, along with references to research showing the link between these practices and enhanced learning. Many of the references contain suggestions for implementing the practices.

According to your unit's policy, you might need to gather and assess a variety of sources of information as part of the peer review. Each of these different sources can shed light on different professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed practices, but it can be challenging to know what to look for. The peer review template provides examples of behaviors the reviewer might look for in each category. Here we suggest a general process for the review and how to incorporate the peer review template.

Lay the groundwork: 

• Communicate with the reviewee about timeline, process, priorities and materials that will be used in the review.
• The reviewee should share any materials the reviewer will need, provide information about the context of the class, and explain any areas of their teaching that they have been working on. Peer reviews can give feedback on these areas and note ideas for improvement, too—these stories of reflection, iteration, and change are essential examples of engaged teaching.
• Set a date for a class visit (if synchronous) and/or a time window during which the reviewer will have access to the course Canvas site. If you will have access to the Canvas site, recall that peer reviewers are expected to respect the Student Records Privacy Policy for Faculty and Staff. 
• Familiarize yourself with the Peer Review Template so you have a sense of what to look for during the review.

Assess the sources of evidence: 

• Peer review should be selective, not exhaustive. When your colleague’s teaching is formally evaluated, your efforts to document some specific examples of professional, inclusive, and research-informed practices will deepen the picture that emerges of their achievement in teaching.
• Assess any materials such as the syllabus and Canvas site that are included in the review. For hints on how various materials can provide information about the different PIERs categories, visit the Peer Review of Teaching page.
• If your unit policy includes observing a class session, perform a “fact-based” observation during class: record what the instructor and students do, examples used, etc. while keeping the template beside you to remind you what to look for. You might find it helpful to use TEP's Class Observation Organizer during your class visit.

Draft the review:

• Fill in the form that starts on page 2 of the Peer Review Template (accessible version), adding comments and notes to give a more complete picture of the instructor's teaching. Draw on the sources of evidence to identify specific professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed behaviors and cite them in the review.

Finish the process: 

• Complete the review process according to your unit policy.
• TEP suggests meeting with the instructor to discuss your observations, including any practices the instructor requested you look for, to identify one or two areas where the class session and/or other materials were effective, and one or two areas the instructor might want to work on.

Version 1: February 2017. TEP develops an observation instrument to guide peer reviewers to look for evidence-based teaching practices. The guide includes a wide variety of practices organized into categories: preparation and organization, tactics, mechanics, and interaction and social climate. References to supporting research literature were included for most practices. 

Version 2: November 2019. The teaching practices in the guide are reorganized to align with UO's new definition of good teaching as professional, inclusive, and research informed. Engaged teaching is not included in the guide, since it is not usually directly observable in the classroom or in course materials.

Version 3: November 2020. To simplify the demands of peer review in the COVID era, the observation guide—which had served as a place to record evidence of practices observed, feedback for the faculty member being reviewed, and a supplement to the written peer review—is significantly revised to allow the completed document to serve as the entirety of the written peer review. Instead of providing extensive lists of practices the reviewer might look for, the new template simply outlines the conditions to look for in the professional, inclusive, engaged (optional), and research-informed categories. The reviewer is asked for (1) examples of how the instructor met the conditions and (2) recommendations for building on or improving teaching in each category.

Version 4: October 2022. The new peer review template provides brief lists of evidence-based teaching practices that align with the professional, inclusive, and research-informed standards, indicating which of the conditions each one exemplifies. Reviewers can indicate an instructor's use of the practice by highlighting, changing text color, etc. For each category, the reviewer is asked to identify and comment on two specific examples of teaching practices they observed and to comment on one area they suggest for enhancement or improvement.

Version 5: January 2024: The template is revised to allow the reviewer to indicate observed practices by checking a box in the electronic document. An accessible version using bullet points is still available.

Version 6: (Current) January 2025: The template is revised to allow the reviewer to explicitly specify that they observed, did not observe, or observed evidence to the contrary for all the practices in the lists. The narrative portions now allow for the possibility of no practices being observed in a professional, inclusive, engaged, or research-informed category. Lists are updated and rearranged so that practices at the top of the list are observable mostly in the classroom and ones lower down the list are observable mostly in other course materials.