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University of Kansas Department Evaluation of Faculty Teaching Rubric

The University of Kansas (KU) requires that evaluation of faculty teaching — including information from the instructor, students, and peers — be considered for promotion and tenure. However, traditionally the quality of this information has been highly variable and reviewers may struggle to make sense of it.

In practice, many evaluations have prioritized a narrow dimension of teaching activity (the behavior of the instructor in the classroom) and a limited source of evidence (student evaluations). To address these shortcomings, the Center for Teaching Excellence at KU recently developed a rubric for department-level evaluation of faculty teaching.

The goal of the rubric is to help departmental committees integrate information from the faculty member being evaluated, their peers, and their students to create a more holistic view of the faculty member’s teaching contributions. The rubric identifies seven dimensions of teaching practice that address contributions to both individual courses and the department’s curriculum:

  1. Goals, content, and alignment
  2. Teaching practices
  3. Achievement of learning outcomes
  4. Classroom climate and student perceptions
  5. Reflection and iterative growth
  6. Mentoring and advising, and
  7. Involvement in teaching service, scholarship, or community.

For each of these categories, the rubric provides both guiding questions and defined expectations. The rubric can also be used to guide a constructive peer-review process, reflection, and iterative improvement.

To ensure applicability across disciplines, the rubric does not weigh or place focus on any particular element or require a particular type of evidence to be used. Departments are encouraged to modify the rubric and use it to build consensus about the dimensions, the questions and the criteria.

Providing a rubric to structure the evaluation of faculty members’ teaching increases the visibility of all dimensions of teaching, clarifies faculty teaching expectations, enables quick identification of strengths and areas for improvement, and brings consistency across evaluations and over time.

The implementation strategy for the rubric included discussions with department chairs and KU Center for Teaching Excellence department ambassadors in advance of its release to increase the probability of broad buy-in. The rubric was piloted during the 2016–2017 academic year as a guide for peer review of teaching, promotion and tenure, and third-year reviews.