Get a student’s perspective on your teaching through new peer dialogue option

Applications are welcome from staff interested in working with students to review their teaching through a new UCL-approved option for peer dialogue.

Peer dialogue involves staff coming together with colleagues or students to reflect and develop teaching practices. A new option, gives staff the opportunity to be paired up with a UCL student to discuss teaching techniques and how they could be further developed.

Trained student reviewers undertake a minimum of 3 hours’ worth of observations on any aspect of teaching practice (e.g. face-to-face or online teaching, Moodle site, assignment brief). Pairs get together prior to the first observation to discuss the context of the course and plans for working together, then meet in-between each observation and finally at the end to discuss the final observation and review the sessions as a whole.

During a pilot of this option, staff reported that it was very beneficial to gain a student perspective on their teaching, particularly for judging clarity, pitch and how engaging the teaching was. The student reviewers were commended for the investment they had in the process and their honesty.

Students commented that they gained both an understand ding of staff ways of thinking, which was helpful for their learning, as well as a respect for the thought that goes into the educational process.

Tanvi Agrawal, PhD student in the Division of Medicine took part as reviewer for Jesper Hansen, UCL Arena One lead.

Tanvi said: “The most important take-back for me was to understand what kind of teaching activities worked best in a classroom setting. Secondly, I got exposure to wide-array of teaching activities. This scheme helped me to reflect on and develop my teaching practice further, and I would definitely recommend this to other students.”

Jesper Hansen, UCL Arena One lead, said: “The student obviously took her role seriously and was well-prepared, seeing it as a real opportunity to support the enriching of my course.”

Dr Sarah Warnes, Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL School of Management, said: “This has been such a positive experience. My reviewer provided me, in an informed and objective way, with ideas for improving my professional practice.”

If you would like to participate in 2017/18 (in either term) please complete the application form and return it to arena@ucl.ac.uk by the end of Thursday 3 August 2017.

Please let your students know about paid opportunities such as this, all of which help to improve education at UCL. More information, including how to make an application to be a student reviewer, can be found on the UCLU website. Applications close on Thursday 3 August 2017.