Teaching Feedback Services
The Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI) offers services that provide instructors with formative feedback on different aspects of their teaching.
The CTSI Quercus Course Review (QCR) service provides instructors with formative feedback on how they use Quercus in their courses to support teaching and learning.
At an instructor’s request, a CTSI Faculty Liaison and/or a divisional educational developer/technologist will provide observations about how Quercus is used in a specific course and considerations to enhance future course design and pedagogical practices. The QCR service best meets the needs of instructors who have used Quercus before and are now looking for more ideas on how to align their Quercus use with their teaching and learning goals.
The QCR process occurs in three stages over three to four weeks. To ensure that we are able to provide meaningful observations, your Quercus course should be “student-ready” at the time of review.
CTSI’s Teaching Observations service is intended to provide instructors with formative feedback on their instructional practices in a class session (face-to-face or online synchronous). At an instructor’s request, a Faculty Liaison from CTSI and/or a divisional educational developer/technologist attends a class session for one hour and provides constructive and appreciative feedback. Teaching Observations are an effective means to gather formative feedback on one’s teaching in a low-risk context and to explore ways to strengthen instructional practices and achieve goals for student learning.
CTSI staff can conduct in-person and online synchronous teaching observations for course offered on the St. George Campus only.
If your course is offered on the UTM or UTSC Campus, please see below for contact information:
- UTM instructors can complete the UTM Teaching Observation Request Form or contact eddev.utm@utoronto.ca.
- UTSC instructors can complete the UTSC Educational Developer Consultation Request Form or contact eddev.utsc@utoronto.ca.
Other options for receiving formative feedback on your teaching:
- Ask a peer from your department to observe your teaching or to review your teaching materials. This can be particularly helpful if you’re looking for comments on course content, the level that your material is pitched at, or the relationship of your course material to other courses offered in your department or program.
- Ask a peer from another department or division to observe your teaching or to review your teaching materials. This can be helpful if you’re looking for feedback from outside your discipline, particularly in relation to organization, presentation, structure, and clarity.
For more information on using peer feedback in your teaching, please see CTSI’s Peer Observation of Teaching: Effective Practices guide.
- Collect mid-course feedback. Administering a short survey to your students midway through a course can provide more immediate formative feedback on particular aspects of the course, such as assessment measures, new teaching strategies, or educational materials. Mid-course feedback can be gathered through a short questionnaire, one-minute papers, or other quick strategies.
For more information on gathering mid-course feedback, please see the CTSI guide Gathering Formative Feedback with Mid-Course Evaluations.