Adaptation of the TEval framework to Improve Teaching Evaluations within a Pharmacy Practice Department

Evaluation of teaching effectiveness in higher education has traditionally focused heavily on student evaluations, especially in annual reviews and for promotion and tenure. However, research has shown that student evaluations are unable to capture overall teaching outcomes and contain high levels of bias. In teaching, there are numerous materials available to help evaluate teaching effectiveness in addition to student evaluations, such as peer reviews, philosophy statements, examples of student works, and assessment data. The goal of our project is to describe our part in changing the culture of our department in using a multidimensional rubric to assess teaching effectiveness as part of the TEval project, a collaborative project of the Bay View Alliance that is funded by an NSF grant.

The Department of Pharmacy Practice joined the TEval project in January 2020 with the goal to improve the current peer review system of evaluating teaching practices in the department in order to promote effective and equitable educational methods. In addition to adapting the TEval framework to align with the department's structure, a pilot of two peer-triad groups was developed to assess the feasibility and utility of the framework. Through the success of the pilot program, we will be rolling out the framework to the entire department in the summer of 2021. We will first describe the development of the peer-triad groups and adaptation of the TEval framework. Secondly, we will discuss methods of department-wide formation of peer-triads, along with the role of each member in the triads and suggested documentation required in the triads. Lastly, we will review our department's goals for integration of materials (e.g. self-reflections, peer-evaluations) for faculty development and for promotion with or without tenure packet.