What are UConn Departments collecting as evidence of  teaching? 

Disclaimer: The showcased approaches are not to be confused with templates or endorsed strategies. They are intended for inspiration only. It is recommended to be purposeful with any elements, to preserve the validity of your evaluation strategy, e.g. if your department decides to rely on peer observations in addition to SETs, strive for calibration between different observers and a pre- and post observation meeting with the faculty.

Allied Health Sciences
The department based their strategy on mature national examples.

AHS Policy

Curriculum and Instruction
In the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, in holding ourselves and one another accountable, we recognize that measuring what matters in teaching is challenging, and that reducing teaching to counting students enrolled or means on Likert scale evaluation scales fall far short of capturing the qualities good teaching entails. Our approach is the on-going evaluation of teaching in our department is to use multiple indicators and to allow for variation to accommodate differences in how our faculty enact their role as teachers.

EDCI Teaching Evaluation Policy-Approved

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
EEB employs the trifecta of student experience/mentoring,  self-evaluation/reflection and  peer assessment. The latter includes an item that sets the course observed in the programmatic context.

A Policy for Evaluating and Enhancing Faculty Teaching Effectiveness and Student Learning

Department of Geosciences

Notable is the guidance in peer review and emphasis on instructor development and reflection. Instructors have choices, e.g. whether or not to include a peer review or which form of student feedback. At the end of each semester a student questionnaire is used department wide for feedback to instructors and benchmark of departmental goals.

Policy for Assessing Teaching Effectiveness
Department of Geosciences Self-Reflective Questionnaire
Department of Geosciences Peer-Review Questionnaire
Department of Geosciences End-semester Student Questionnaire

Human Development and Family Studies
Faculty are using peer observation as the main additional way to document teaching excellence. Their teaching observation form (not a validated tool) in 2 versions can be accessed here; one form for face to face and one for online courses.

Procedures for Observing the Teaching of HDFS Faculty
HDFS - Teaching Observation of Online Courses (Example)
HDFS – Classroom Teaching Observation (Example)

Nursing
The department encourages faculty to engage in professional development related to teaching and learning. They favor a formative peer observation strategy of 1-2 times during each course.  As an alternative to the survey available through OIRE (quantitatively oriented), they have been encouraging an open-ended tool like Stephen Brookfield’s Classroom Critical Incident Questionnaire. Content analysis is used to generate themes for each question, and that are provided and discussed in summary with students in class and used to complement the SET report for promotion and tenure. Click here.

Pharmacy Practice 
This department is drawing from literature in their field and is using a combination of peer evaluation or material, observation, and self-evaluation.

Teaching Evaluation - UConn School of Pharmacy Department of Pharmacy Practice
APPE Teaching Eval questions (year-end)
360◦ Evaluation of Teaching Example Series
Special Articles