Feedback on Teaching: Sharpening your Skills through Course Observation

When I applied for a position as assistant professor of psychology at Binghamton University in 1973 there was no request for my “philosophy of teaching”, nor, in fact, any major concern that I had never taught a course while I was a graduate student. When I arrived on campus that fall, no one gathered the incoming faculty to introduce them to the community, to the demands of balancing research, teaching, and service. My, how things have changed! Here at B.U. new faculty are annually provided an orientation comprising numerous resources in the form of brief meetings, presentation, readings, discussions, etc.

Within many departments, senior faculty members often provide formal mentorship to newer colleagues. In contrast to 45 years ago, when the received wisdom was “focus on your research; that’s all that really matters”, new faculty members are urged not only to consider their teaching skills along with their research, but they are also urged to take advantage of resources that have been developed to help them accomplish this. And that is all to the good, because nowadays, when the time arrives for consideration for promotion, faculty teaching is evaluated in some detail. Input is gathered from each semester’s accumulated student ratings, faculty are observed by peers, syllabi examined, and a written statement about one’s teaching philosophy and progress is expected. But long before personnel decisions are made, faculty are able to take advantage of numerous workshops on aspects of teaching large lectures, small seminars, new classroom technology, etc., provided by the Center for Learning and Teaching. This campus gem comprises a staff dedicated to providing curriculum consultation, resources for enhancing teaching skills, even a “studio” for taking advantage of new technologies for instruction during any semester (https://binghamton.edu/clt).

Feedback on Teaching at Binghamton University

For anyone interested in improving their teaching, how does one go about it? Sure, all the resources that I just noted above are there for all of us. But probably the oldest strategy is simply to have someone watch you teach and offer you feedback. It’s been the way of world in just about every endeavor, I would argue, not just teaching. But on our university campus, such a simple, straightforward undertaking has been anything but simple or straightforward. That’s because observation of one’s teaching on our campus has traditionally been linked with personnel evaluation. Senior colleagues do typically provide feedback during this process, but it is feedback that is part of a formal evaluation. If it is part of a third-year review, it becomes a baseline of sorts against which one’s mandated review for tenure is often measured. Yet, at many other universities, but particularly 4-year colleges, one can receive teaching observation and feedback outside the realm of personnel decisions. In fact, these procedures are most often structured to be confidential and the feedback frequently includes some form of follow-up. Isn’t it time that faculty at Binghamton have the same opportunity? Most of know when we’re struggling with a class or of a colleague who, despite their effort, teaches a class that students avoid. Wouldn’t it be a boon to be able to be observed in confidence, to receive feedback, to consult about issues related to everything from syllabus development to classroom management to generating classes in which the students are engaged without the anxiety and concern that all such undertakings will wind up being a topic of the discussion about your bid for promotion?

Formation of a Teaching Observation Service

At the time of my retirement in 2014, I found myself considering exactly these questions. I had informally been consulting with colleagues about their teaching for a number of years, accumulating many hours observing in their classes and providing detailed feedback. I had done the same over the telephone, in pondering methods for varying the way colleagues teach a subject to different audiences. And I recently had the experience of a colleague sitting in on one of my large lecture classes with his nephew, providing a rare, unbidden opportunity for my request to him for detailed feedback. After pondering about what might be interesting and challenging to undertake during retirement (in addition to teaching one course each year during a 3-year Bartle appointment), I met with James Pitaressi, Director of the Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT), and Eric Machan Howd, Director of Instructional Design at the CLT, with my proposal. I suggested a service that I could provide to allow B.U. instructors to request confidential observation and feedback of their teaching.

The timing was good. Eric had recently developed and begun to implement curriculum/syllabus consultation and feedback, entailing an interview and discussion of an instructor’s goals for a class, how outcomes were measured, challenges with the class, etc. My proposed observation and feedback could work in wonderful complementarity with, or independently of Eric’s consultation. And so it began.

Initial Observations and Further Support for Teaching Feedback

I have observed and provided oral and written feedback to instructors in:

• Biology
• Psychology
• Geology
• Latin
• Spanish
• English Literature
• Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Management
• Health & Wellness
• Physics
• Finance
• Human Development
• Education

The classes themselves have come in all shapes and sizes: graduate and undergraduate courses, large lectures, small classrooms, seminars and even one presented solely via video/on-line. In collaboration with Eric, I and those instructors whose classrooms I have observed have presented a workshop at the CLT to publicize the availability of this service. During that workshop, we made available the written feedback (with the agreement of those instructors) and learned from the participants in the audience about other ideas that could further enhance our service. Most critically, we learned that the instructors who had been observed, despite their initial trepidation, found the subsequent discussion and feedback to have been very helpful. As one faculty member commented, “No one has ever observed my teaching or provided this level of attention and detail to my efforts. I wish that I had had this sooner”. Last year, a number of instructors anonymously completed a survey of their experiences in being observed and receiving written feedback; the outcome was extremely gratifying. Their responses indicated much satisfaction with every aspect of the process, from our initial meeting to what they learned from the report as well as the support they experienced throughout.

Our hope in preparing this description of this new service on campus is both to publicize its availability to instructors at any level as well as to foster a culture of expectation that good teaching can and should be encouraged on our campus. We know that several departments offer peer-to-peer classroom observation or consider classroom observation as part of their department mentoring process. We applaud those arrangements and submit that the CLT consultation and observation service can either complement those departmental plans or provide a more confidential experience for any instructor. Because it is still early in the development of this service, questions about the benefits of an observer from outside of one’s discipline, the availability of follow-up at some interval after the observation, as well as other ideas are under consideration and will be part of what we hope will ultimately be an expansion of these services. Meanwhile, we welcome your requests for consultation and observation, as well as your ideas. Please contact the Center for Learning and Teaching main office to get started: 607-777-5040 or clt@binghamton.edu.