Further Investigation into the use of Peer Observation for Professional Development: Piloting the AL Toolkit

During 2020-2021 the project team ran a peer observation project funded by FASSTEST. The project was aimed at DD102 tutors who would observe and be observed in each other’s’ online tutorial sessions. The process was co-created with a group of 8 ALs and they were paired after a group meeting to agree principles of the process and feedback. After the observations and feedback had taken place a focus group and one to one interviews with the tutors enabled us to collate their views of the benefits and challenges of the peer observation process. The project outcomes were clearly positive with all participating tutors enthusiastic about peer observation (PO) as a useful tool/pathway for AL personal and professional development. Participants described PO experience as ‘forward-thinking’, ‘insightful’, ‘rewarding’ and ‘inspiring and stimulating’. The key outcomes of the project reaffirmed that PO offers ALs an alternative way to share good practice and ideas, create a sense of community, enhance their skills in online teaching and therefore learning for students. Following the successful completion of the original co-created project we believe that the findings have highlighted that PO could be an effective form of CPD and it is important to research the efficacy of a toolkit to enable a wider use of peer observation to enhance online teaching practice. Four of the original AL project participants have worked with us to produce a peer observation toolkit, which explains the background, process, and resources for Peer Observation.

This proposed project has a two-fold focus:

1. to test the effectiveness of the practical toolkit for Peer Observation
2. to evaluate the effectiveness of the ambassador/mentor role

It is proposed that ALs from the original project group take on the role of ambassador/mentor, to pilot the toolkit with AL colleagues on DD102. The AL ambassadors will have two key roles in the piloting of the PO toolkit with the wider DD102 AL community. Firstly, to brief the new group of DD102 AL participants on the concept of PO and the observation process and secondly to act as points of contact for questions and advice during the implementation process. The purpose of exploring this role at this stage is to get to a point where further decisions on what the role would be (paid, managed by STs, etc. can be teased out). However, we had envisaged that the role would be part of the peer led process we are developing and an alternative route for professional development (which is included in their new AL contract). Our role, as project leads, is to act as advisors and to oversee the evaluation of this stage of the project. We will focus on the usability of the toolkit for enhancing online teaching practice, alongside the usefulness of the ambassador/mentor role for successful implementation.