The FARPET is designed for peer evaluators of any experience level to provide meaningful formative feedback to fellow educators in a variety of teaching and learning contexts. The process employs a detailed rubric to facilitate a set of observation procedures, and encourages reflective conversation about the quality of observed teaching and what could be improved upon.
Peer evaluations are valuable tools for developing educators’ skill sets through individualized feedback that speaks to specific moments of teaching and encourages reflection. High quality peer evaluation systems are associated with student academic achievement and effective teaching of competencies.
Peer evaluation carries benefits not only for the observed, but for the observer, who is also afforded the opportunity to reflect on teaching practices and may learn from their peer and/or the conversation around the observation. FARPET focuses on observable qualities only, and requires no content or teaching experience to complete the rubric. That is, each level describes visible or audible features of teaching such that anyone who is sufficiently comfortable with the tool may assign a “best match” rating without needing to draw on a minimum expertise.
“Evaluating online teaching is definitely not intuitive. It’s nice to have a tool that has been developed and vetted specifically for this task. For peer reviewers who plan to use FARPET, the brief training not only provides guidance on using the tool for consistent evaluation of online teaching, but also teaches the peer reviewer to become a better online teacher themselves.“
Dr. Misty Bailey, University of Tennessee
Formative Assessment Rubric for Peer Evaluation of Teaching (FARPET) 