Teaching-Related Unit Policy Updates

Teaching-Related Unit Policy Updates

Overview

The Unit Policy Review Process will establish how each unit will review and evaluate teaching, more fully moving UO toward its years-long goal of multi-source, criteria-based teaching evaluation.

This page offers a brief description of the teaching-related policies, the tasks required for units to complete them, and resources that can help to support their completion for the:

Policies and tasks needed to complete them

Assignment of Professional Responsibilities

Units’ Assignment of Professional Responsibilities policies—due to the Provost’s office in June 2024—relate to teaching by indicating a unit’s standard course load and the circumstances under which that load would be adjusted, and by articulating general instructional policies that span all UO courses and connect all UO faculty. These policies are the place to account for, say, how especially challenging teaching assignments count in load, or how a unit will administer the Student Experience Survey, or other unit-wide instructional expectations.  

The Task

Your unit’s Assignment of TTF and Career Faculty Responsibilities policy must be approved by department vote, then sent to the Provost’s office (a file copy) and your dean’s office in early spring 2024 term. (See the Provost office’s policy template: you’ll need to develop and insert language for the parts in blue and brackets.)   

Units might consider:

  • Are there any priority teaching areas that should count differently in load (say, teaching a large class and managing a teaching team, leading a certain number of independent studies, redesigning a high priority course as part of the unit’s Student Achievement Goals process, etc.)? 
    • See III. Tenure-Related Faculty Professional Responsibilities, A. Workload Expectations for Tenure-Related Faculty, ii. Teaching, 2. Adjustments to Standard Load and IV. Career Faculty Professional Responsibilities, A. Workload Expectations for Career Instructional Faculty, 2. Teaching, b. Adjustments to Standard Course Load 
  • Do all faculty understand the general expectations of teaching? Some policies that connect all UO courses and teaching are fairly new—this is a chance to check in about them. 
    • See II. General Considerations, E. General Teaching, Advising, and Student Contact Expectations, ii. General Expectations of Teaching
  • Are there any additional unit-wide instructional expectations that you’d like to include as part of this policy? (For example, some units might collectively decide to administer the Student Experience Survey in class during week nine or 10)? 
    • See II. General Considerations, E. General Teaching, Advising, and Student Contact Expectations, ii. General Expectations of Teaching

Tasks, in addition to the considerations above:

  • Prepare a draft of blue, bracketed sections for departmental discussion.  
  • Redraft based on departmental discussion.  
  • Vote at a department meeting and submit faculty approved policy by your dean-defined deadline using these instructions for submission

Peer Review of Teaching

Units’ Peer Review of Teaching polices—due to the Provost’s office in June 2024—should improve these regular, collegial assessments of teaching, both by determining the content and scope of peer reviews and clarifying units' processes and management of them. Units will submit a template all faculty will use for the review itself as an appendix to their policy. Units’ work on this policy is meant to ensure peer review is a valuable window into faculty teaching, along with faculty members’ own self presentation and student feedback.  

The Task

Your unit’s Peer Review of Teaching Policy must be approved by department vote, then sent to the Provost’s office (a file copy) and your dean’s office in early spring 2024 term. (See the Provost office’s policy template: you’ll need to develop and insert language for the parts in blue and brackets. As an appendix to your policy, you should include a template that the unit will use to complete each peer review. You’re welcome to adapt and adopt TEP’s.)      

Units will need to decide:

  • The content of, template for, and scope of peer reviews.   
    • Substance: For what aspects of teaching are peer reviewers seeking evidence, including specific aspects of Professional, Inclusive, Engaged, and Research-Informed (PIERs)?   
    • Tool: Will you use TEP’s peer review template or another? What adaptations might be needed?  
    • Scope: What does a reviewer actually review (aspects of a Canvas site, syllabus, a class meeting, etc.)?  
  • The process and personnel for peer reviews.   
    • Who serves as reviewers? For example, does the unit want to specify anything around relevant ranks of reviewer/reviewee, or whether they are within or beyond the unit?   
    • Does the unit wish to use a Peer Review Committee?   
    • How (or by whom) are reviewers assigned/chosen?   
    • Who keeps track of administrative details?    

Tasks for this policy include:

  • Discuss and decide the content, template, and scope of peer reviews. 
  • Discuss and decide the process and personnel for peer reviews
    • See III. The Review Process and Management of Reviews
  • Prepare a draft of the blue, bracketed sections for departmental discussion and look together at TEP’s review template, or another that you recommend. 
  • Discuss the draft at a department meeting.  
  • Revise based on departmental discussion.  
  • Vote at a department meeting and submit faculty approved policy by your dean-defined deadline using these instructions for submission.  

Career- and Tenure-Related Faculty Review and Promotion

Perhaps most important of all, Career- and Tenure-Related Faculty Review and Promotion policies—due to the Provost’s office in June 2025—include an opportunity for units to customize and supplement university-wide teaching standards (professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed), and to define what it means to meet, exceed, and fall below expectations related to these standards. Ultimately, units’ decisions about criteria and achievement will form the rubric for how teaching will be evaluated at key moments in faculty careers. 

The Task

Your unit’s Career and Tenure-Related Faculty Review and Promotion Policies must be approved by department vote, then sent to the Provost’s office (a file copy) and your dean’s office in early spring 2025 term. (See the Provost’s office’s template for career and short duration faculty and for tenure-track faculty. You’ll need to complete a Teaching Evaluation Rubric as part of these policies. The university’s may be revised but not contradicted.  This 2025 deadline may be postponed as the University of Oregon and United Academics continue bargaining related to Articles 19 an 20 of the faculty contract. The Office of the Provost will release updated version of these policy templates.

Units will need to decide:

  • Are there modifications to the Teaching Evaluation Rubric that clarify the Professional, Inclusive, Engaged, and Research-Informed standards for your context?   
  • What does it mean to meet, exceed, or fall below expectations in each of those four areas, or in other areas specific to your department?   
  • Are there additions to these criteria, the conditions that define them, the sources of evidence that will be used, etc. that match their unit’s teaching values and aspirations?  
    • See Career Faculty Review and Promotion Policy Template, II. Career Faculty Performance Reviews, A. Criteria for Reviews, 2. Teaching and Tenure-Track Faculty Review and Promotion Policy Template, III. Unit-Level Criteria, A. Criteria for Reviews, ii. Teaching 

Tasks, in addition to the considerations above:

  • Host a departmental discussion to decide contents of the Teaching Evaluation Rubric. Discuss:
    • What the university’s teaching standards mean in your departmental context. What practices are really important as examples of these categories?
    • From your perspective, what needs to be more clearly defined or more fully captured for UO’s Teaching Evaluation Rubric to work for you? 
  • Redraft based on departmental discussion. 
  • Vote at a department meeting and submit faculty approved policy by your dean-defined deadline using these instructions for submission. 

Resources to Support Policy Completion

A. Resources to facilitate unit conversation and decision-making:

B. Examples of policy updates and processes

  • Peer Review of Teaching policy samples:
    • The Peer Review Policy: Sample Departmental Profiles guide includes four sample departmental profiles—each one taking a different tack about peer review (for example, by differently defining who a peer is, by establishing peer review committees, by electing to adopt TEP’s peer review template or selecting a published, validated instrument, etc.).Two of these samples fully imagine units’ responses to the Peer Review of Teaching Policy template.
  • Examples of policy documents matched to unit values and context: 
    • "Mapping a teaching value" traces an aspect of teaching that a hypothetical unit might want to emphasize, mapping that value across multiple policy components, including the Teaching Evaluation Rubric, Peer Review of Teaching Policy, and Peer Review of Teaching Template. 
    • Examples of Clarifying and Values-Based Revisions to the Teaching Evaluation Rubric: This document collects several examples of teaching aspirations, values, and clarifications that UO units have considered making to Teaching Evaluation Rubric their will submit with their Career and Tenure-Related Faculty Review and Promotion policies.

C. Read about "professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed" teaching

Quick Links to Key Policy Templates

Due 2025

New deadlines and policy templates will be announced as soon as possible given UO-UA bargaining around Articles 19 & 20 of the faculty contract.

Role of Policies in Multi-Source, Criteria-Based Teaching Evaluation

This image represents key ideas behind UO's effort to revise teaching evaluation: that there should be known criteria defining good teaching—rather than 'I know it when I see it'—and that teaching evaluation should include multiple windows into faculty practice. Now, unit policy updates translate these university-wide changes into departmental contexts.  

PIER review of teaching process