UVA Holistic Teaching Evaluation Framework

This framework contains guidelines that schools and units can use to inform their teaching performance evaluations as part of their annual review, contract renewal, tenure, or promotion review processes. It describes four primary domains of teaching activity, possible criteria for assessing each activity, and likely sources of evidence demonstrating effectiveness.

During the 2022-2023 academic year, the provost office convened a committee of faculty to discuss how teaching may be evaluated in a holistic way at UVA. The goal was to develop guidelines for evaluating faculty teaching and incentivizing excellence and innovation in teaching that schools could use in their own policies and practices. These guidelines could inform faculty teaching performance evaluations as part of their annual review, contract renewal, tenure, or promotion review processes. They could also be used by faculty to self-assess their own teaching effectiveness for formative purposes, or to help them prepare materials for evaluative purposes.

The project was motivated by research indicating that, while well-designed and validated student evaluation instruments can provide useful feedback on teaching effectiveness, relying solely on them for evaluating instructors’ teaching effectiveness is problematic for several reasons[1]:

• Student evaluations are subjective and influenced by various factors such as personal biases, expectations, and even the course size and difficulty. As a result, they often do not accurately reflect an instructor's true teaching ability or expertise.
• Students often prioritize factors like entertainment value or leniency in grading over the quality of instruction, which can lead to inflated or misleading evaluations.
• Relying solely on student evaluations neglects other important aspects of teaching, such as curriculum design, course organization, and assessment methods, which are crucial components of effective teaching.

Evaluations of teaching materials and practices from peers, administrators, and self-reflection are necessary to obtain a comprehensive and less biased assessment of teaching effectiveness. Furthermore, using a variety of evaluation methods ensures a more holistic and fair evaluation process, providing a clearer picture of a faculty member's overall performance and potential areas for improvement.

To help guide more holistic approaches to evaluating teaching effectiveness, the committee developed the attached framework. Informed by other established frameworks in the literature, it describes four primary domains of teaching activity, possible criteria for assessing each activity, and likely sources of evidence demonstrating effectiveness. The criteria and sources of evidence presented in the framework are neither prescriptive nor exhaustive. They are simply a jumping-off point to help faculty, departments, and schools imagine a range of possibilities for what effective teaching looks like in their respective domains. Some criteria and sources of evidence will align well with some contexts and less well with others. When considering types of evidence, users should consider both the depth and the scale of teaching activity and ensure they attend to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Schools/units can use the framework to evaluate teaching performance in different ways, including:

• Engaging the faculty in discussions on a proposed teaching evaluation process, refining the process based on faculty feedback, and making the evaluation criteria/rubric transparent to all faculty. The framework can help facilitate this dialogue.
• Determining which of the four domains and what activities and criteria within each domain are important to the school/discipline. Schools may add criteria as appropriate to meet discipline and school goals. Schools may specify the importance of each criterion to be used within an evaluation rubric for faculty by track and rank.
• Determining what evidence the school/unit wants to consider for each criterion, whether these types of evidence will be allowed or required, and for what evaluation processes (annually, for reappointment, for promotion and tenure, etc.). Consider additional types of evidence as appropriate. We recommend that at least two types of evidence be used to evaluate any criterion, as each provides different perspectives and is subject to its own possible biases.

[1] Arreola, R. A. (2006). Developing a comprehensive evaluation system: A guide to designing, building, and operating large-scale faculty evaluation systems (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Ad Hoc Committee on Holistic Teaching Evaluation:

• Aaron Bloomfield, SEAS
• Maite Brandt-Pearce, Provost Office
• Rose Buckelew, Sociology, A&S
• Tamika Carey, English, A&S
• Michael Gilbert, Law
• Manuel Lerdau, Environmental Science, A&S
• Alison Levine, French, A&S
• Tonya Moon, Curriculum, Instruction & Special Education, SEHD
• Michael Palmer, Center for Teaching Excellence