Regular teaching feedback is helpful for understanding your students’ learning experiences and giving you an outside perspective from colleagues to inform your reflections. Although teaching feedback processes are often associated with the more evaluative renewal, tenure, and promotion processes, when done outside these formal processes they provide opportunities for intentional reflection to support continuous improvement.

Why is gathering feedback on your teaching practices important?

• Feedback helps the university improve the teaching and learning experience.
• Feedback allows faculty to understand their strengths and weaknesses and enhance their teaching and courses accordingly.  
• Student feedback is essential in helping the university understand its planning context and measure progress towards goals.
• Assessment has a role to play in your teaching portfolio.

Soliciting feedback is one of four instructor's responsibilities outlined in the USask Learning Charter.

• Learning Charter

The summative evaluation of an instructor’s teaching, when done well, should include multiple sources of teaching quality data with which to conduct the evaluation. USask policies on collection of student and peer feedback are written with the intent to be developmental, i.e., to enable and demonstrate an instructor’s growth as an educator over time. The assessments used to inform the evaluation process can often include, but is not limited to:

• Student learning experience feedback
  USask has adopted the Student Learning Experience Questionnaire (SLEQ) facilitated through Blue by Explorance for soliciting student feedback about their learning experiences in their courses. Your academic unit may another instrument approved by the unit.
• Peer review of teaching practices
  Normally conducted by senior faculty in your department or college but also available with peer consultation offered through the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning.
• Evaluation of syllabus, teaching materials, and assessments used in your classes
  Particularly as they relate to identified objectives and learning outcomes of the course.
• Reflections
  Reflection is an educator’s opportunity to integrate other sources of feedback with one another and reconcile observations with the thoughts and intents that went into the planning and design processes.

Policy

In June 2022, University Council approved the Policy on Peer Review of Teaching Practices. This policy standardizes elements of the peer review process, while allowing good flexibility for disciplinary and other differences between academic units. Key highlights of the Policy include the following:

• A developmental focus, helping educators identify opportunities to improve teaching and giving due credit in future reviews for doing so.
• A holistic understanding of teaching, including reviews of assessment design, syllabi, Canvas materials, and more – in addition to more traditional classroom observations.
• An explicit consideration of equity factors that may influence reviews, in pursuit of equitable outcomes from review processes.

• Policy on Peer Review of Teaching Practices

Conducting Peer Reviews

To support faculty in conducting reviews of their colleagues’ teaching practices, several resources and supports have been developed. These include institutional templates that can be used, advice on reviewing teaching materials, and how to include equity as a factor in your review. See the page at the button below for more resources for reviewers, reviewees, and academic leaders.

• Peer Review Supports and Resources

Policy and Procedures

The Student Learning Experience Feedback Policy applies to all course-related student learning experience feedback which flows out of and acknowledges educator and university community commitments made in the University of Saskatchewan Learning Charter.  This includes student feedback collected through SLEQ or other course-related student feedback tools/instruments utilized in departments, schools and colleges.

• Student Learning Experiences Feedback Policy
• Supplemental Procedures

Student Learning Experience Questionnaire (SLEQ)

SLEQ is the institutionally support student feedback collection instrument. It was implemented after a review by the Teaching, Learning and Academic Resources Committee of University Council (TLARC) concluded that our old system, SEEQ, did not align with some of our institutional values and priorities related to teaching and learning. SLEQ underwent a successful pilot, which included an extensive validation process. SLEQ is now used by a majority of academic units on campus for student learning experience feedback collection.

• Learn more about SLEQ

Student Evaluation of Educational Quality (SEEQ)

SEEQ was the centrally supported student course feedback collection system prior to SLEQ. The online SEEQ system no longer allows new surveys to be created, and is only online to enable instructors to retrieve their feedback before it is taken offline. If you taught courses that used SEEQ to collect student feedback, please ensure you download all feedback prior to the end of the Fall 2022 term to ensure uninterrupted access to it.

See the IT Support Knowledge Base article, How do I retrieve information from SEEQ (Student Evaluation of Education Quality)? for more information about saving your SEEQ feedback.

• Access SEEQ Feedback