Peering into the classroom

John’s commitment to teaching excellence goes much, much deeper than that piece of paper. Last summer he approached the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) with an unusual proposition: to invite faculty from across disciplines to sit in on every one of his large lecture classes in CRWR 209: Introduction to Creative Writing and provide formative peer reviews of his teaching.

“I felt that it was important that I rededicate and re-energize my teaching practice,” he explains. “For the last two years, I’ve been involved in an intensive, rewarding period of deep, reflective course design with a few of my colleagues on a large TLEF project, converting face-to-face large lecture classes into a blended model for our undergrad Minor program. We were all new to the blended model, and while the collaborative aspect of the project inspired rich, pedagogical discussions and decisions, the practical challenges of converting to a blended model took much of my time and energy to solve.  I knew the courses were pedagogically stronger, but at the same time, I was concerned that my in-class teaching wasn’t as effective as it used to be, and as I wanted it to be for the new, blended model.”

Inspired by the book Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, an exploration of the quest for excellence in medicine by Atul Gawande, John decided to turn to his peers and take a deep dive into the peer-review process. “I realized that in 19 years of post-secondary teaching, I’d had only two or three colleagues come to my room and evaluate my teaching. I thought, I’m just going to have a colleague come into every class—every single class all semester long. So, I pitched this outrageous idea to CTLT.”

Working with Isabeau Iqbal, Senior Educational Consultant at the CTLT, John had up to three peer reviewers sitting in on every lecture of his 12-week Introduction to Writing Fiction course in the 2019 Fall Term. “I wanted colleagues involved from STEM and from other Faculties across the Arts who have strong traditions of pedagogy,” he says. He also offered to reciprocate with peer reviews of their classes—and about two-thirds of his reviewers took him up on the offer.

“I was privileged to see how scientific disciplines were teaching,” he notes. “I was really impressed by the different approaches to teaching across disciplines on campus. You learn something different every time you see another teacher in action. The two-way conversations with instructors, both in the Creative Writing program and across campus, was the richest part—as were the fruitful conversations Isabeau and I had in our bi-monthly meetings during the project.”