Initial Publication Date: October 13, 2025

Penn State University

Summary

In the summer of 2020, The Pennsylvania State University, through a collaboration between the University Faculty Senate and the Office of Faculty Affairs (formerly the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs), began work to create a Faculty Teaching Assessment Framework to replace the teaching evaluation process in use at that time. The collaboration produced a series of reports that were supported by the University Faculty Senate and then implemented by the Office of Faculty Affairs, which oversees evaluation processes for all Colleges and Campuses at the University. The initial reports by the University Faculty Senate proposed the Faculty Teaching Assessment Framework to: (1) address the over-reliance on quantitative results in the evaluation of teaching university-wide, (2) reduce bias in the interpretation of evidence, and (3) improve consistency across academic units. Subsequently, an Implementation Task Force defined four Elements of Effective Teaching that represented a shared understanding and serve as standards against which student feedback, peer review, and self-reflection are assessed. A Standing Advisory Committee for Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness was formed in 2023 to monitor the implementation of the new framework and advise the University Faculty Senate and the Office of Faculty Affairs on changes that are needed.

Institution Type: Highest Research Activity
MSI: no

Policy Level: Institution - University with multiple campuses, shared curriculum and single administrative structure that governs all Penn State campuses.

Policy Status Ratified - Teaching assessment policy was ratified in spring 2023, and implementation occurred from fall 2023–fall 2025, with improvements ongoing

Keywords: Teaching assessment, policy change, change framework, defining effective teaching

Overview

The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) has a unique structure comprised of 23 campuses that are home to nearly 7,500 faculty. All operate under the purview of a single Executive Vice President and Provost with administrative authority for all faculty at the University. Hence, all faculty appointments, annual review, promotion, and tenure are administered through this single office. As a result, many committees and administrative levels must interact, and many policies and procedures related to faculty evaluation must cross campus boundaries and administrative levels and be sensitive to the different missions of the multiple locations.

The decision to radically revamp the assessment of teaching was driven by faculty concern about bias in the teaching evaluation process and by faculty interest in creating a more developmental and supportive assessment approach that leveraged multiple sources of evidence. The main objectives for the revamped faculty teaching assessment framework were:

  1. Provide faculty with feedback (student and peer) to improve and hone curriculum and instruction.
  2. Provide administrators with more robust and equitable evidence of faculty use feedback to inform their pedagogical decisions.

The revision was accomplished in a series of senate reports, the first of which was, Developing a Faculty Teaching Assessment Framework (Acrobat (PDF) 238kB Oct23 25), that was passed by a vote of the faculty senate in April 2021. These included: 1) improve the data gathered by including multiple data sources and encouraging faculty reflection; 2) focus student feedback on course objectives rather than the personal characteristics or mannerisms of the instructor to reduce bias; and 3) improve consistency across all campuses and academic units and encourage mid-semester feedback.

The second phase included creating a broad framework for teaching assessment and holding more listening sessions. In the final phase, new questions were developed for the student feedback instrument, which were vetted during additional listening sessions with students and by surveying all faculty at the University.

A second report (Acrobat (PDF) 270kB Oct23 25) was presented to the University Faculty Senate in September 2021. This report established the framework for teaching assessment that includes, three sources of evidence:

  1. Student feedback focused on learning objectives, including a formative mid-semester survey with results provided only to the faculty member, and an end-of-course survey for faculty, which includes some responses used for summative assessment;
  2. A peer-review by a trained faculty reviewer; and
  3. Self-reflection to encourage faculty members to document their own assessment of their courses, student feedback, and peer reviews.

The report recommended the formation of a task force to evaluate the efficacy of the recommendations and implement the Faculty Teaching Assessment Framework.

A Special Joint Task Force on the Implementation of the Faculty Teaching Assessment Framework (FTAF) was formed; its members were appointed by the University Faculty Senate and the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. The task force issued four reports to the Senate in the Spring of 2023. A March 2023 report assessed the feasibility of the structural elements of the framework and proposed four Elements of Effective Teaching. The task force then issued three reports focused on the three-voice structure: peer review, self-reflection, and student feedback, with each in a separate report.

Theme 1: Align policy change with what matters

Relevant evidence.

The University Faculty Senate initiated the effort to revamp the assessment of teaching university-wide in the summer of 2020. An ad hoc committee comprised of members of three committees of the University Faculty Senate (Faculty Affairs, Intra-University Relations, and Educational Equity and Campus Environment) was charged to review the faculty teaching assessment process and recommend changes to provide a more developmental assessment based on multiple data sources.

The first phase (Acrobat (PDF) 238kB Oct23 25) of work focused on data gathering. This included a survey of academic areas to gather best practices and holding university-wide listening sessions with key constituent groups, including faculty, students, and administrators. The committee also benchmarked with peer institutions.

As a result of this data collection effort, a new framework (Acrobat (PDF) 270kB Oct23 25) emerged that defined teaching excellence, expanded the evidence used to assess teaching, and created a process that was consistent across the university.

The sources of evidence for the assessment of teaching were expanded to reflect three voices: self, peers, and students. The proposed self-reflection would include an overview of instructional developments and responses to peer and student feedback. Penn State had long required peer evaluation of teaching, but each college would develop a peer review process to be consistently applied across ranks and faculty appointments.

The items on the student survey were narrowed to focus on course objectives and student self-reflection about their engagement with the course. And the number of scaled-response (Likert) items was reduced to two (from 15-20) to discourage overemphasis on quantitative data. In addition, student feedback was to be gathered mid-semester and at the end of the course. The committee deliberately chose to refer to "student feedback" because it is more accurate way to emphasize that the students' collective voice was only one of three sources of evidence.

Each of the three sources of evidence were to be judged against the shared definition of effective teaching. The committee defined four evidence-based Elements of Effective Teaching.

Organizational identity.

Penn State is Pennsylvania's Land Grant university founded in 1865. It is a multi-campus institution with 23 campuses dispersed across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Many of the campuses are located near students' homes in both rural and urban settings and all play a vital role in their communities. It is one university geographically dispersed, with one curriculum, one faculty senate, one Provost, one President, and one Board of Trustees.

The University Faculty Senate is composed of 200 full-time faculty, representing all academic units across the 23-campus structure. These organizational features of Penn State were crucial to the design and implementation of the new teaching assessment framework. For example, the original ad hoc committee included members of three standing senate committees (Faculty Affairs, Intra-University Relations, and Educational Equity and Campus Environment), the first two with broad representation from across the university. The Office of Faculty Affairs governs promotion for non-tenure line faculty and the promotion and tenure for tenure-line faculty, and the faculty annual review process, as well.

Collaboration between the University Faculty Senate and the Office of Faculty Affairs has enabled the changes in both policy and practices at Penn State that led to the successful implementation of the new teaching assessment framework.

Equity and Justice.

Concern for mitigating bias was paramount to revision of the teaching assessment process at Penn State. Penn State had received multiple reports from faculty from groups underrepresented at Penn State about biased comments from students, as well as biased interpretations of the student ratings data from the previous instrument. These faculty were frustrated that biased comments and ratings were not recognized as part of the teaching assessment process. When biased negative comments are not recognized it risks inaccurate assessment of faculty members who are subject to the bias.

Compounding the potential for bias was a tendency for reviews to feature negative ratings and comments, even when they were far outnumbered by positive comments and ratings and thus were not representative of students' collective views. This tendency inappropriately gives negative comments and ratings greater weight than positive comments. This exacerbates bias for faculty from underrepresented groups.

Two changes were made to address concerns about bias in student feedback. In the past, one person, the unit head (or designee) summarized the students' written feedback for all courses (potential for bias to be introduced) and all members of the promotion (or promotion and tenure) committee reviewed the written summary and all quantitative data, the latter of which led to over-reliance on quantitative data.

By fall 2025, review of all student feedback was to be assigned to a pair of reviewers, one suggested by the faculty member under review and the other a representative of the promotion committee. The pair of reviewers is responsible for writing a 750-word evaluative report of the student feedback.

Two additional changes are also intended to reduce the impact of bias. First, the introductory comments for the new student feedback instrument, the Student Educational Experience Questionnaire (SEEQ) and the Mid-semester SEEQ (MSEEQ) includes the following statement:

Unconscious and unintentional biases about your instructor's identity can influence responses to SEEQ questions. Please make a conscious effort to resist stereotypes based on identity (e.g., race, gender, age). Focus instead on your learning experiences in the course and your interactions with the instructor, and not unrelated matters such as the instructor's appearance. Discriminatory comments may be deleted from the instructor's record.

We have also communicated broadly and frequently that faculty members may request that their written feedback be reviewed for bias before they read it. We have also created a process whereby faculty may ask for certain comments to be removed from their student feedback if it violates university policies against bias and harassment.

Theme 2: Be strategic about policy content

Penn State has a strong tradition of shared governance, and its University Faculty Senate has existed for more than 100 years. The Faculty Teaching Assessment Framework is associated with six faculty senate reports, three of which required an affirmative vote by members of the University Faculty Senate and the approval of the university president; the other reports did not require a vote, but each was discussed by the full senate.

The University Faculty Senate and the Office of Faculty Affairs collaborated to create the Special Joint Task Force on the Implementation of the Faculty Teaching Assessment Framework which ensured that key decisions were integrated into university policies. The Task Force had senate and administrative co-chairs, as did each of the subcommittees (Student Feedback, Peer Review, and Faculty Self-Reflection).

The Elements of Effective Teaching was an early recommendation of the Joint Task Force in March 2023. The Task Force identified lack of a basic and shared understanding of what constitutes effective teaching at Penn State as a key problem, as that lack increases the risk of validity errors between the three areas of assessment. The four Elements also connect the peer review, self-reflection, and student feedback; previously, students, peers, and administrators could define teaching effectiveness differently.

To improve internal validity, the Task Force reviewed research on teaching effectiveness and benchmarked against peer institutions. This work resulted in the creation of the Elements of Effective Teaching, as evidenced through research and related literature. The Elements of Effective Teaching are:

  1. Effective Design: Well-designed courses (lessons/modules) provide a variety of student-centered learning and assessment tasks that align with course objectives. Scaffolded and transparent design of learning and assessment tasks as well as clearly structured, accessible, and relevant materials provide appropriate challenge and support for student development and learning.
  2. Effective Instruction: Effective instruction provides a clear structure to students that supports the process of learning. It takes cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of learning into consideration and creates positive learning environments.
  3. Inclusive and Ethical Pedagogy: Inclusive and ethical pedagogy is the explicit inclusion of all learners, the attention to accessibility, and the removal of barriers from learning. The instructor's ability to understand their own assumptions, critically reflect on their knowledge and practices, and cultivate a sense of belonging lays the foundation for full participation by all students.
  4. Reflective and Evolving Practice: Reflective and evolving practice involves examining one's beliefs about teaching and learning (and mentoring and advising, if appropriate) and considering changes based on our experiences and our own learning. Reflective practice and an understanding of research-informed pedagogical techniques guide modifications to course design and instruction. The evolution of instructional practices is informed by feedback from students and enhanced through our interaction with peers and professional development opportunities.

Importantly, these four elements are not exhaustive or mutually exclusive. Rather, they were distilled from literature to provide a meaningful through line connecting self, peer, and student perspectives. For example, inclusive and ethical pedagogy permeates course design, instruction, and reflective practice over time. The four elements are also abstracted, recognizing that the specific ways they manifest in particular courses is influenced by disciplinary convention and priorities, structural features of classes, the modality for engaging instruction, and student characteristics.

Theme 3: Make policy change someone's job

The Framework is now a component of all summative review processes at the University. The Office of Faculty Affairs is responsible for enforcing the policies and implementing changes approved by the Standing Advisory Committee for the Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness. This Standing Committee advises the Office of Faculty Affairs on the implementation of components of the Framework, as well as the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence (SITE), Penn State's center for teaching and learning. SITE administers the student surveys on behalf of the university, in addition to working with faculty to improve their teaching. The Standing Committee reports regularly to the University Faculty Senate about changes and receives on feedback from Campuses, Colleges, and academic units (e.g., departments, divisions, and schools). Feedback on the Framework is also continually gathered by the Senate, the Office of Faculty Affairs, and the Schreyer Institute.

Theme 4: Approach policy change as a process

The purpose and purview of the Standing Advisory Committee for the Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness is to continuously review and revise the system for evaluating teaching effectiveness. The original 2021 report recommended an annual review for the first three years of implementation, followed by a review every five years thereafter. However, the regular and ongoing feedback has led to debate regarding how often the Framework should be reviewed. Debate continues with the most likely outcome being a five-year timeline for full review of the Framework. When the full review occurs, the report stipulates that review should assess consistent implementation, equitable practices, and anti-bias measures and result in a report to the University Faculty Senate. Any recommendations for changes or adjustments would be made at that time, however, if a significant implementation item is identified before this review by the Standing Advisory Committee, it will issue a report to the University Faculty Senate recommending changes. In the interim, there is constant dialogue about how to implement the Framework. For example, the Standing Committee meets monthly to consider items of concern raised across the University by the academic units and iteratively offer guidance and clarification on implementation.

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