Assessment for Better Teaching: Teachers Need Attention Too!

Learn about four continuous assessment practices that could take the pressure off faculty at the end of each semester.

Assessment for Better Teaching: Teachers Need Attention Too!
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At the end of each semester, the teacher’s evaluation is an event feared by many as a form of judgment day, but this does not have to continue to be the case.

In higher education, we have become accustomed to assessing learning and analyzing outcomes. The irony is that the faculty’s teaching performance is usually revisited only at the end of the term with broad classifications of mediocre, above average, or excellent teaching. This habitual categorization denies us an in-depth understanding of the teaching faculty’s challenges when designing their courses and assessments.

We often think that teachers will always remain great once they are rated as excellent in their performance evaluation. Nonetheless, such is not the fact. We must remember that teaching and learning are dynamic activities involving various stakeholders and require continuous checks on quality (re-)assurance (Mitchel et al., 1997; Cheng, 2016). Our institutions need to question and reflect on the broad assessment of faculty performance to avoid the trap of comfort with simple categorization and help their teachers genuinely work toward excellence.

“If faculty evaluation is continuously sourced from multiple stakeholder perspectives, this could take pressure off faculty before the end of each semester.”

How can higher education institutions treat faculty better?

Teachers could dread end-of-semester evaluation as a form of judgment day. However, suppose teaching practices are continuously assessed from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives (i.e., the teachers themselves, their peers, the students, and external pedagogical experts) with ongoing feedback. In that case, the faculty will experience much less pressure at the end of every semester.

The importance of these assessment practices is to avert the “surprises” at the end when it is too late to fix anything that could benefit or improve the teaching and learning. Integrating the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders throughout the semester (Kamandhari & Lavandera, 2021) instead of just one (the students) at the end can be much more productive.

First, personal reflection or unbiased personal teaching videos could be introduced so faculty can examine their performance, big or little successes, and areas to improve (Clarke, 2007; Norton & Campbell, 2007; Tripp & Rich, 2012; Loera & Mejía, 2018). The dialogue with oneself can then be extended to a small group discussion regularly held with a faculty committee appointed by the university to oversee the enhancement of good teaching practices. The committee’s task is not to judge the faculty but to help them ameliorate their course content designs, tests and exams, online and presential student interactions, and other aspects.

In addition, peer review and observing online and onsite teaching can help the faculty confront challenges in teaching (Gosling, 2014; Golparian, Chan, & Cassidy, 2015; Jones & Gallen, 2016). A teacher can feel comfortable sharing their difficulties with a trusted peer after their visit and report. The faculty member may even request a revisit from their assigned peer to assess how they performed while resolving their challenges. Here, we can glimpse the benefits of peer review observation as an ongoing process throughout the semester. It is recommended that peer reviewers be trained before the visit to know the institutional peer review and observation procedures to provide constructive feedback to the teacher being observed. The vocabulary of the feedback should be oriented toward improving, not penalizing, the teaching (Buskist, Ismail, & Groccia, 2014).

In addition to these two assessment practices, external reviewers’ visits are another option to enhance the teachers’ pedagogical practices. The external reviewers can be pedagogical experts with whom the university has close contact. Figure 1 illustrates the four assessment focuses:

Figure 1

Four Assessment Practices


Note. Modified from “Guidelines for the Alignment of Indirect Measures of Teaching Performance: Triangular Perspectives of Students, Peer Faculty, and External Reviewers” by H. H. Kamandhari and S. Lavandera Ponce, 2021, The International Journal of Assessment and Evaluation, 28(2), p. 96. Copyright 2021 by Common Ground Research Networks, Some Rights Reserved, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

What is an appropriate rating scale for the reviewed faculty member? 

The assessments for teaching described above involve continuous feedback and perspectives from various stakeholders; thus, an in-depth or analytic description set for each performance criterion and rating scale should be provided (Krosnick & Fabrigar, 1997; Brookhart, 2013). The fundamental descriptions must support an appropriate, unbiased, and accountable rating scale of the faculty. In addition to close-ended questions, the university may provide space for open-ended questions. The open-ended questions can further clarify what a reviewer sees in the classroom (online or face-to-face). Thus, the reviewers need to be respectful, non-judgmental, and solely focus on the areas of improvement. The reviewed teaching faculty members should remain open to overcoming their challenges and stay updated, learning from their peers and experts.

Tables 1 and 2 provide some brief examples of how to design teaching performance rubrics.

Table 1

Example of Rubrics (Continuous Improvement Survey)


Note. Adapted from “Guidelines for the Alignment of Indirect Measures of Teaching Performance: Triangular Perspectives of Students, Peer Faculty, and External Reviewers” by H. H. Kamandhari and  S. Lavandera Ponce, 2021, The International Journal of Assessment and Evaluation, 28(2), p. 113. Copyright 2021 by Common Ground Research Networks, Some Rights Reserved, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Table 1 is a post-review adapted for students assessing their teacher’s performance from the learner’s viewpoint.

Table 2

Example of Rating Scales (Collaborative Peer-Supported Review and Observation of Teaching)


Note. Modified from “Guidelines for the Alignment of Indirect Measures of Teaching Performance: Triangular Perspectives of Students, Peer Faculty, and External Reviewers,” by H. H. Kamandhari and S. Lavandera Ponce, 2021, The International Journal of Assessment and Evaluation, 28(2), p. 106. Copyright 2021 by  Common Ground Research Networks, Some Rights Reserved, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Table 2 illustrates the rating scales for the teacher’s performance during a faculty peer review and observation. The rating scales should be designed considering the depth of the description of each rating scale so as not to overlap the subsequent rating scale.

These four assessment focuses for teaching can assist teaching faculty to have a fuller picture of their trajectories as lifelong learners. These practices can yield more insights, primarily when supported by teaching and learning analytics (Akçapinar, 2017).

The assessment model for teaching presented in this article is a revision of our 2019 pilot. We saw the need to review and revise our previous teaching performance assessment tools to reflect the reviewers’ responsibilities and capacities (whether students, external reviewers, peer faculty, or the faculty themselves).

Continuous assessment tools are never finished products, always needing revisions. The reason is that teaching and learning are dynamic and continuously evolving. Thus, we must adjust and adapt accordingly to the current trends.

About the authors

Helen Hendaria Kamandhari (kamandharihelen@gmail.com) has a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (Instructional Design and Technology Study Program) from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA, and is a Fulbright Fellow. Currently, she is the Co-Owner of Embedded Systems Services in Nigeria. Previously, she was an Educational Research Specialist at the Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CE2A) at Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC), Lima, Peru. Before working at UTEC, she served as a faculty member at Politeknik Ubaya, a part of the University of Surabaya, Indonesia, for 15 years. Her areas of research interests are assessment and evaluation, learning analytics, typography, instructional design and technology, English Language Teaching and Learning, English for Specific and Academic Purposes, and Applied Linguistics.

Silvia Lavandera Ponce (slavandera@utec.edu.pe) has a Ph.D. in Education and Technology from the University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain. She also has four master’s degrees in Media Engineering for Education from the University of Poitiers (France), Intercultural Education from the University of Huelva (Spain), Teaching Strategies for the 21st Century from UNED (Spain), and Educational Technology from Technical University of Lisbon (Portugal).

She is currently the Director of the Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CE2A) at Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología, Lima, Peru. Her areas of research interests are curricular topics, educational models, learning models based on competencies, instructional design and technology, and blended learning in higher education.

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Edited by Rubí Román (rubi.roman@tec.mx) – Observatory of Educational Innovation.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.


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Helen Hendaria Kamandhari and Silvia Lavandera Ponce

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