Teaching is evaluated at the University of Oregon for a variety of reasons, including for promotion and tenure, contract renewal, and assignment of merit raises. Because these applications are so important to the faculty members and the university, evaluation instruments and processes must be as equitable and transparent possible.

Members of the UO community will be familiar with recent research on bias inflecting teaching evaluation, particularly the student evaluation of teaching. TEP summarizes this research and underscores the importance of drawing on multiple data sources to inform evaluation in its Statement on the Student Evaluation of Teaching.

To mitigate bias and ensure evaluation supports the development of UO’s teaching culture, the Office of the Provost and UO Senate are analyzing systems of teaching evaluation and implementing new instruments. Under consideration is a “Continuous Improvement and Evaluation of Teaching System” that

• asks units to establish criteria to for evaluation;
• uses the central resources of the university to ensure evaluators have richer evidence of teaching quality and instructors have richer evidence to inform teaching improvement;
• captures and honors the process of teaching improvement.

This work is ongoing and will be the topic of a Senate Committee on the Continuous Improvement and Evaluation of Teaching and a TEP faculty learning and leadership community (CAIT) on Teaching Excellence and Evaluation in the 2018-2019 academic year. 

See UO reports about UO’s cutting-edge work in Inside Higher Ed and Around the O.