Departmental Teaching Evaluation

Cohort

Evaluating teaching effectively requires thoughtful alignment with evidence-based practices and the inclusion of diverse perspectives. The Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL) supports departments and programs at CU Boulder in enhancing their teaching evaluation processes through personalized consultations and a wealth of curated resources.

By aligning teaching evaluation practices with current scholarship, many CU Boulder units have successfully improved their methods. These efforts often involve:

  • Identifying Gaps: Examining existing practices to uncover areas for improvement in teaching evaluation.
  • Developing Tools: Creating or adapting instruments to systematically assess teaching quality, incorporating input from students, peers, and self-reflection.
  • Updating Policies and Procedures: Refining practices for implementing these tools, often in collaboration with initiatives like the Teaching Quality Framework (TQF) or the A&S Quality Teaching Initiative.

In This Section, You’ll Learn:

  • Departmental Frameworks: Strategies for designing cohesive, department-wide approaches to teaching evaluation.
  • Student Feedback: Tools and techniques for gathering meaningful insights from students to inform teaching improvement.
  • Peer Feedback: Methods for engaging colleagues in constructive evaluations of teaching practices.
  • Self-Assessment: Resources for reflecting on and assessing your own teaching to support growth and innovation.

The CTL offers downloadable, editable documents and viewable PDFs below to help you implement effective teaching evaluation strategies. Explore these tools to ensure your department’s practices are equitable, evidence-based, and aligned with institutional goals for teaching excellence.

Frameworks provide standards for development to help faculty improve their teaching practices. They also provide structure and guidance to support meaningful implementation of teaching evaluation measures. Frameworks typically contain multiple “dimensions” that collectively capture the practice of teaching as a whole. In most cases, frameworks take the form of rubrics that are used to document, review, and evaluate university teaching (rubric-based frameworks). They can be used:

  • by educators to self-assess teaching or as a guide for documenting their teaching for formal evaluation,
  • as part of teaching mentoring systems, and/or
  • to guide evaluation of teaching effectiveness for annual merit, reappointment, comprehensive review, promotion, and tenure processes.
 

Example Teaching Evaluation Frameworks

  • Teaching Quality Framework (TQF). The TQF framework encompasses seven dimensions of teaching: Goals, Content, and Alignment; Preparation for Teaching; Methods and Teaching Practices; Presentation & Student Interaction; Student Outcomes; Mentorship & Advising; and Reflection, Development, & Teaching Service/Scholarship. 
    • The TQF rubric-based framework includes a detailed rubric for each dimension; an evaluation summary; sample forms of evidence; sample instructions for using the rubrics for instructors, evaluation committee members, and mentors; and suggested guidelines for how primary units might approach adapting the framework to meet their needs.
    • The TQF also developed a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) supplemental framework that contains only the evaluation criteria that pertain to drawing from diverse perspectives, engaging in equitable and inclusive practices, and improving students’ sense of belonging.
    • The TQF gap-analysis tool can help departments/individuals connect sources of evidence that can be used in teaching evaluation to the seven dimensions of quality teaching.
  • Quality Teaching Initiative (QTI). The QTI rubric-based framework was adapted from the TQF framework above and encompasses three dimensions of teaching: Inclusive, Goal-Oriented, and Scholarly.

Department/Unit Example Frameworks

External Example Frameworks

The TQF framework above is adapted from a framework originally developed by the University of Kansas (KU) Center for Teaching Excellence. You can find their Benchmarks for Teaching Effectiveness framework and many examples from KU departments at .

Units often rely heavily on end-of-semester Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) to evaluate teaching quality. At CU, we collect SETs in the form of our Faculty Course Questionnaire (FCQs). The Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) recommends that FCQs be used primarily in the formative, rather than summative, assessment of teaching quality (Best Practices—Moving Beyond the FCQ (pdf)). In other words, FCQs should be used to provide instructors with ongoing feedback and guidance on how to improve their courses and teaching, rather than as a final evaluation of their teaching. The BFA also recommends that evaluators be made aware of potential biases in FCQs and that questions asking students to rate the instructor or course overall be removed since such omnibus questions are particularly prone to bias. Indeed, as of Fall 2020, FCQs at CU Boulder (PDF) no longer include omnibus questions. In sum, although student perspectives are an important voice in teaching evaluation, SETs/FCQs should not be the only way to incorporate student perspectives in teaching evaluation. Furthermore, student voice measures should be combined with peer and self voice measures (see below). Examples of student voice measures that could be used to supplement SETs/FCQs include mid-semester surveys to gather student feedback, classroom interviews or focus groups, and student letters. 

 

Guidance around using FCQs

Guidance on using Mid-semester Surveys to Gather Student Feedback

Example Classroom Interview Guidelines

In classroom interviews or focus groups, students are placed into small groups to discuss their responses to questions about their learning and other experiences in the course. Students' feedback is then shared with the instructor in the form of common themes that emerged across students; the facilitator is careful to ensure feedback cannot be tied back to any individual student. Classroom interviews can be adapted to take up more/less of the class period and are often combined with Peer Classroom Observations (see Peer Voice below). 

Example Student Letter Guidelines

Many departments solicit letters from current and past students to include in an instructor’s  dossier for reappointment, promotion, or tenure. Some departments are updating their solicitations to include guidelines to students on what to include in their letters or how to write their letters. 

Most units include peer observation letters as one of their multiple measures for teaching evaluation. However, unstructured peer classroom observations– i.e., those that are not based on a set of core criteria– can result in inconsistency and do not always address teaching practices that are valued by a department. To increase consistency, many units at CU Boulder have worked to develop written procedures on how their department conducts peer observations, in most cases paired with specific protocols to guide classroom observations.

 

Example Department Procedures and Protocols

Procedures for conducting departmental peer observations should detail who is observed, by whom, when, and how often. Protocols for doing peer classroom observations include specific criteria for observations and often additional guidance around doing observations. 

CTL BUFF Classroom Observation Framework

  • The CTL has developed a framework for observable classroom practices across four dimensions: 
    • Be Prepared
    • Use Active Learning Strategies
    • Foster an Inclusive & Equitable Learning Environment
    • Feedback and Assessments
  • This framework includes supplementary guidance around conducting observations (pre-observation meeting guide, observation form, and post-observation meeting guide).

Often the instructor’s voice is lacking in the teaching evaluation process. However, self-reflection is a key element of teaching evaluation and improvement. Regular reflection is recommended as a means to promote one’s continued growth as an educator and as a basis for updating one’s Teaching Statement every few years. Therefore, many departments are developing guidelines to encourage instructors to regularly reflect on their teaching practice and to increase transparency around expectations for required Teaching Statements. Units can encourage regular reflection by incorporating self-reflections into their annual merit review process and/or encouraging frequent, brief reflections as part of the teaching process.

 

Reflective Teaching Statement Guidelines

Guidelines for reflecting on teaching typically include a list of guiding questions that align with a unit’s values and a teaching evaluation framework (see Frameworks section above) from which faculty can select whatever dimensions are most relevant to their own practices.

Frequent self-reflection

  • TQF Toolkit - a step-by-step guide for departments to systematically evaluate and improve their teaching evaluation practices
  • The Department of Physics updated their Physics Primary Unit Policies and Standards for Faculty Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure (pdf) in March 2023. As part of this process they created a rubric-based framework for evaluating teaching (linked within as “dimensions of teaching practice”), “standards for teaching quality” that outline levels of meritorious and excellent teaching accomplishment for tenure-line faculty, and “departmental procedures” that describe multiple measures of teaching across student, peer, and self voices.
  • The Residential Academic Programs (RAPs) have a variety of teaching evaluation materials publicly accessible at . Materials include criteria for teaching excellence (their framework), peer observation tools, suggestions for writing teaching statements, guidelines for soliciting student letters, and example classroom interview questions.