A Development-Focused Approach to the Peer Review of Online Teaching: Using OSCQR with Genuine Peers
Abstract
The peer review of teaching has primarily focused on departmental classroom observations for promotion and tenure decisions. The observation of one’s teaching can also serve as a valuable opportunity for self-reflection, acquiring feedback from peers, and introducing research-based intervention strategies and new teaching techniques. While these observation and review activities are common in the brick-and-mortar classroom, there appears to be a peer review gap between the physical campus classrooms and the learning management system housing online courses. Rubrics for the evaluation of online course design have attempted to fill this need, as an administrator may choose to use the results of online course quality rubrics, like Quality Matters (QM), as a substitution for classroom observation or peer review of teaching. The QM process is evaluative, producing a score to indicate whether or not the course design as presented in the learning management system has met the outlined standards. However, QM does not address course delivery, teaching, or student outcomes. An approach to online course quality review that addresses both the design of the course and one’s teaching (synchronously and asynchronously) would be most beneficial to our college’s faculty. Existing research on development-focused peer review of teaching will be used to inform our approach. Much of this research has been conducted in the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom, though the lessons within are transferable to any teaching modality.
While peer observation and review of teaching are common in the traditional classroom, there are gaps in the peer review practices of in-person and online teaching. Rubrics like Quality Matters address only the design of online courses, and administrators often use these rubrics as a substitute for classroom observation or peer review of online teaching. Our college investigated approaches to online course quality peer review to include both the design of the online course and one’s teaching (synchronously and asynchronously). We coupled the OSCQR rubric with existing research on development-focused peer review of teaching. This session shares our approach.