Transforming Higher Education through Multidimensional Evaluation of Teaching: The TEval Project

Author(s):
Noah Finkelstein
Professor
University of Colorado Boulder

This project (TEval) seeks to advance educational practices and models of more effective teaching evaluation at universities. In addition to sharing tools and practices for improved evaluation, we are advancing understanding of the institutional change process for the adoption and integration of new approaches. This poster describes the use of evaluation, incentive, and reward processes as a lever to promote greater use of evidence-based teaching within universities as complex systems, and how this transformation process is taking place at each of three institutions (University Massachusetts, University of Kansas, and University of Colorado). A cross-case comparison study (from Michigan State University) shares how these strategies and processes interact with different institutional cultures and distills both localized and generalizable principles in these change processes. In addition to sharing the particulars of the TEval initiative, we share how this work is connected with and contributing to emerging national dialogs around improved evaluation of college and university teaching that is being fostered by the National Academies, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities/ Network of STEM Education Centers, and the Accelerating Systemic Change Network.This material is based upon work supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation, Award numbers: DRL 1725946, 1726087, 1725959, and 1725956. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Coauthors

Ann Austin, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; Andrea Follmer Greenhoot, University of Kansas, Lawrence KS; Gabriela Weaver, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA