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Helpful Definitions

  • Peer: A faculty colleague of any rank in the same disciplinary department at the College of Veterinary Medicine, or at another institution.

     
  • Interdisciplinary Peers: Faculty or staff colleagues within OSU who can comment upon and give guidance and input regarding a faculty member’s pedagogy, including philosophy and approach to teaching, presentation skills, facilitations skills, assessment methods, and curriculum design and organization.

     
  • Intradisciplinary Peers: Faculty colleagues within a faculty member’s area of expertise (at OSU or another institution) who can comment upon and give guidance and input regarding a faculty member’s course content, including course outcomes/objectives, materials, and resources.

     
  • Formative Evaluation: Designed to contribute to the development of teaching. The purpose of formative evaluation is to validate or ensure that the goals of instruction are being achieved and to improve the instruction, if necessary, by means of identification and subsequent improvement of deficiencies, problematic aspects, or areas that might be more fully developed.

     
  • Summative Evaluation: Evaluation with the goal of assessing the quality of teaching performance/effectiveness. A summative review results in documentation that may inform decision-making on retention, promotion, and tenure.

     
  • Teaching Philosophy: A self-reflective statement regarding a faculty member’s conceptions of and beliefs about teaching and learning, a description of how he or she puts those into practice by providing concrete examples. Faculty seeking peer review for formative purposes are encouraged to share their teaching portfolio with a reviewer. Examination of a teaching philosophy is part of summative review processes.

     
  • Teaching Portfolio: A collection of work samples and reflective commentary that describes and documents teaching ability over career progression. A summary of teaching accomplishments and curation of examples of teaching and learning materials, a mechanism for reflecting upon teaching. Faculty with significant teaching duties are encouraged to keep a teaching portfolio, but portfolios are not required for submission to any VMC department. Typically, a portfolio contains:
    • A statement of teaching philosophy.
    • Description of teaching experiences/responsibilities.
    • Evidence of teaching effectiveness: reflection on innovative instruction or scholarly teaching, summary of student feedback, department evaluations
    • Teaching awards and recognition.
    • Reflection on/a summary of professional development efforts.
    • Course planning artifacts (sample learning modules/media, syllabi, lesson plans, assignments, exams).
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