Teaching Evaluation

Teaching Evaluation Faculty Support Resources 

Engaging with UO's System for Improving & Evaluating Teaching

To evaluate teaching at the University of Oregon means using multiple sources of evidence to determine whether a faculty member’s teaching is professional, inclusive, engaged in reflective practice, research-informed, and any other standards explicitly incorporated into an academic unit’s review and promotion policies. The Office of the Provost outlines policies and procedures for teaching evaluation.

The Teaching Engagement Program plays no role in the formal evaluation of a faculty member’s teaching. Instead, it’s dedicated to supporting faculty development in professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed teaching. TEP also provides support to help faculty and units engage meaningfully and reflectively with UO’s Continuous Improvement and Evaluation of Teaching System. 

These pages describe the key, university-wide sources of evidence that UO uses to improve and ultimately evaluate teaching. And they offer tools and resources for conducting the Student Experience Survey in class, looking at results in a dynamic dashboard, deepening peer review, developing unit policies that match your unit's teaching aspirations, and more.

 

multi-source criteria-based teaching graphic

More than 'I Know Good Teaching When I See It'

To mitigate bias and ensure evaluation supports the development of UO’s teaching culture, the University of Oregon, led by the University Senate, grounds teaching evaluation in a broad but substantive definition of what good teaching means. UO's Teaching Evaluation Standards are defined on the Office of the Provost website and TEP offers lots of examples of the many ways faculty enact these standards. No single source of evidence should be used to determine teaching quality at UO. University faculty read for evidence across three sources. 

Multiple Evidence Sources for Teaching Evaluation

Each unit has a Peer Review of Teaching Policy that establishes the process and template used for peer reviews of teaching in the unit. Our page offers general guidance for peer review and a general template: units can update to the latest version any time.  
UO collects feedback on teaching through the Student Experience Survey, which it centrally promotes at the end of term (E-SES) and makes available to interested faculty midway through the term (M-SES). E-SES results are automatically included as part of teaching files; M-SES results go only to instructors.  
What faculty themselves say about their teaching is a crucial window into teaching quality. Faculty present their teaching through candidate statements and optional Instructor Reflections and teaching portfolios.