Documentation:CTLT programs/PROT/Process/OnlineReviewQuestions

The Peer Review of Online Teaching: Online Course Review Questions for Peer Reviewers

Formative Peer Review Program - Resource (Updated August 2019)

Teaching is complex and cannot be narrowly defined with a list of criteria. It encompasses activities that range from incorporating active learning, to acknowledging the diversity of student experiences within your classroom and intentionally supporting them, to creating clear slides and more. In addition, within the broad activities that comprise “teaching”, instructors have varied approaches to design, delivery, assessment, and other aspects of teaching. 

How to use this document:

This resource is meant to help guide the peer review of a classroom observation process and is part of the CTLT formative peer review of teaching program.

The questions in this document assume the reviewer and instructor being reviewed have met prior to the classroom observation of teaching to discuss the latter’s goals for the peer review. Please modify these questions and document as relevant.

Though this document is set up as a one-way observation of teaching, we encourage you to consider a reciprocal peer review where instructors observe each other’s class and share what they learned and reflect together.

We also encourage you to broaden the peer review beyond the classroom observation and include conversations about course/learning design and the instructor’s professional growth.

Questions for Discussion:

1. In the pre-observation conversation, what did the instructor state as their goals for the online module that we will be reviewing?
   
2. How did the instructor go about addressing and/or meeting those goals for their students in the online module?
3. What approaches and methods did the instructor use to communicate the learning outcomes and key concepts?
   
4. How, if at all, did the instructor assess whether the intended learning outcomes were met?
   
5. Did the instructor follow their plan for the online module? If not, what changed? Why?
   
6. What active learning strategies were used in the online module? Were the strategies accessible and engaging for students? How and why?
   • What did the instructor do to encourage and support less engaged students to participate (e.g., encourage students' participation and validate their contributions, provide multiple and diverse examples, use inclusive language, etc.)?
7. How did the instructor attend to students' sense of belonging, to the diversity of their experience and to their desire for relevance (i.e., how did they pay attention to diversity and inclusion?)?
   
8. What worked well in this online module?
9. What suggestions do you have for the instructor?
10. What have you learned (as a reviewer) that will contribute to your growth as a teacher?