Skip to main content
University of Washington UW W Logo Human Centered Design & Engineering Wordmark Logo

HCDE Intranet

Peer Teaching Evaluations

The Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering conducts comprehensive teaching evaluations because instruction is the fundamental work of the University and educating our students is one of our first priorities. The Department believes that through peer teaching evaluations all faculty will continually improve their teaching and that the evaluator as well as the instructor being evaluated have much to gain from the evaluation process.

The Department intends that these evaluations will be conducted in an atmosphere of collegiality and mutual support and asks that evaluators strive to appreciate teaching styles and methods different from their own. Faculty are encouraged to augment peer reviews with evaluation by trained professionals such as the staff members of the Office for the Advancement of Engineering Teaching & Learning (ET&L) or the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).

Guidelines for Peer Evaluators

The following guidelines should assist peer evaluators in evaluating HCDE faculty members. They can be applied both to specific courses and to the instructor's overall teaching effort. Evaluators are also encouraged to review the relevant UW and COE guidelines as well as interpretive documents such as the “Faculty Peer Review of Teaching” prepared by CELT. Although the guidelines below are phrased as questions, the Department is not asking evaluators to organize their evaluation report as a set of specific responses. Rather, the guidelines are intended to convey the Department's overall concerns and to serve as a heuristic during the evaluation process.

A significant portion of the Department's teaching takes place outside the classroom and assumes such forms as dissertation direction, internship supervision, and the teaching of directed research groups. Such instruction should be covered in peer evaluations, but evaluators will need to interpret these guidelines so that they apply to out-of-class instruction.

  1. How relevant is the course content to the title and catalog description of the course and to the intended role of that course within the overall curriculum of the Department? How well does the course, as delivered, match the approved course content and how well does it support acquisition of the target core competencies?
  2. How current and how rigorous is the course content as presented by the instructor in class and in course readings and assignments?
  3. How well does the instructor’s interaction with the class contribute to the effectiveness of the course? Does the instructor maintain good rapport with the students? Does the instructor maintain an atmosphere of intellectual inquiry and rigorous pursuit of the course objectives?
  4. How well does the course format contribute to the effectiveness of the course? Does the course meet in appropriate blocks of time? Is there an appropriate balance of lecture, discussion, and independent work?

Procedures for Peer Evaluations

Peer evaluations may be based either on comprehensive or on abbreviated reviews, depending on the rank of the reviewee and, for associate teaching professors, associate professors, teaching professors and professors, the point reached in the three-year review cycle.

  • For assistant teaching professors and assistant professors, a comprehensive collegial evaluation shall be performed every year.
  • For associate teaching professors, associate professors, teaching professors and professors, a comprehensive collegial evaluation shall be conducted every three years and an abbreviated evaluation shall be conducted in each of the intervening two years.

Comprehensive Reviews

  1. Each peer evaluation will be conducted by a single faculty peer reviewer unless the peer reviewer is junior in rank to the reviewee. If the selected evaluator is junior in rank to the reviewee, the evaluator should work with one of his or her mentors to create a two person evaluation team to conduct the evaluation. If the evaluator is junior in rank to the reviewee and has no assigned mentor, then the junior evaluator should ask a senior faculty member to work with him or her to create a two person evaluation team.
  2. The peer evaluator(s) will begin by meeting with the reviewee to plan the evaluation and discuss its format and scope. The reviewee will be given the opportunity to specify what feedback he or she wants with regard to a specific area of teaching. He or she will also be given the opportunity to explain his/her instructional goals, methods, instructional philosophy, etc. The reviewee should have some advance notice of this meeting; he or she can request a different evaluator from the one assigned.
  3. Peer evaluations should attempt to consider the full teaching activity of each instructor. Toward this end, all courses and HCDE496/596 research groups should be examined during each evaluation. At the same time, evaluators should recognize that courses will at times be in an experimental or transitional stage and should evaluate them accordingly.
  4. Peer evaluators should attend at least one of the instructor’s classes. The Department recognizes that an instructor’s performance in class is likely to suffer because of the presence of an evaluator.
  5. The reviewee should provide the following materials for evaluators: (1) student course evaluations (both multiple choice forms and comment sheets) conducted over the past three years; (2) a one-page self-evaluation for each course taught; (3) a packet including syllabi, handouts, course assignments, and other course materials for each course taught; (4) information on a instructor’s grading practices and the distribution of final grades for each course; and (5) representative student work with, when feasible, instructor's comments on the work.
  6. If the evaluation process indicates that the Department has cause for serious concern (e.g., evidence that an instructor is missing large numbers of classes or evidence of academic misconduct), the evaluators will attempt to interview the instructor’s former students. Only under the most serious circumstances and as a last resort should the instructor's current students be interviewed.
  7. Evaluators will prepare a draft version of the evaluation report. After receiving the draft, the instructor should meet with the evaluator(s) in order to ask questions or state objections concerning the evaluation process or the draft report. Evaluators may also choose to convey orally comments that are unsuitable for inclusion in the report. Evaluators, for example, may wish to convey findings based on partial or conflicting evidence in oral form. This meeting shall be strictly confidential; the discussions that take place shall not be disclosed at any time or in any form by either the evaluator(s) or the instructor.
  8. Evaluators will prepare a final version of the evaluation report and present it to the instructor, who will have the opportunity to append specific responses or a general statement to this document. The evaluation report will then be made available to the Chair and to committees responsible for decisions concerning promotion, tenure, merit raises, and teaching assignments.

Abbreviated Reviews

With the following exceptions, all provisions of the Department's peer review policies and procedures for conducting comprehensive reviews apply to the conduct of abbreviated reviews:

  1. Abbreviated reviews are to address only one course. Each year during the two years of abbreviated reviews, a different course should be reviewed.
  2. Classroom visits are not to be a required component of abbreviated reviews.