Designing a Competency-Based Peer Assessment Scale for the Evaluation of Teaching in Higher Education

Abstract

A predominant theme in current literature on faculty evaluation is that the judging of the quality of instruction is much too complicated to be based solely on the filling out of rating forms by students, on administrator’s personal assessment, or the consensus judgment of peers. Each of these is useful but no one is sufficient. Present literature yields little information in the area of peer assessment of faculty. This paper will detail the procedures used to develop a competency based faculty peer evaluation instrument for higher education as well as address several administrative/political issues likely to be raised by faculty and administrators.