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Learning Innovation Office

  1. Learning Innovation Office
  2. ECHO – Enhancing Classrooms with Helpful Observations

ECHO – Enhancing Classrooms with Helpful Observations

 


ECHO is a peer observation project, an opportunity to open the classroom to share and learn with one another, to perceive the classroom differently, an opportunity to echo best practices and collaboration.

The project's main aim is to encourage reflection on teaching practices and to enhance the quality of practices on a supportive and collaborative environment. More specifically, ECHO aims to provide the participating faculty and instructors opportunities to:

  • Become aware of teaching practices and their effects on learning
  • Increase pedagogical sensibility
  • Experience a culture of collaboration in which best practices are shared and valued
  • Develop pedagogical knowledge about specific methodologies and strategies
  • Help enhance the learner experience
  • Foster collaboration between different subject areas within CATÓLICA-LISBON

 

This project launched its 1st edition in the first semester of 2022/2023 and it is expected to have an edition each semester.

 

What are the potential benefits of participating in peer observation of teaching?

Peer Observation of Teaching has raised a lot of interest as a vehicle to enrol in reflective thinking about teaching practices, providing opportunities to improve the quality of teaching (Hammersley-Fletcher & Orsmond, 2005). As such, peer observation of teaching has often been considered and researched as a promising device for faculty professional development (e.g. Torres et al., 2017).

This professional development device allows faculty to assume the role of both observer and observee, providing opportunities to envision the same context with different lenses. Within this process, participants monitor and notice “surprise, the unexpected, the deviation from the normal course of events” (Tenenberg, 2016, p. 771). Often, observing their peers teaching enables the observers’ reflection on several features of practice that might pose or solve problems in the teaching and learning process (Hammersley-Fletcher & Orsmond, 2005; Torres et al., 2017). Thus, peer observation provides opportunities to learn and leads to change in participants practices that arise from observing others’ classrooms and anticipating what can occur on their own (Tenenberg, 2016).

Overall, peer observation of teaching as the potential to lead participants to gain insight into their teaching practices, to trigger self-reflections on teaching practice, to share good practices, and to collaborate with colleagues towards professional development of teaching.

Also, there are several successful Peer Observation of Teaching projects, often involving several departments/schools of a University, such as the Peer Observation Program at Harvard University and Peer Observation at London Business School. Similar projects have also been implemented at universities in Portugal, including Observar e Aprender from University of Lisbon and De Par em Par at University of Porto.

 

How to participate

Any faculty or instructor at CATÓLICA-LISBON can volunteer to participate at each edition of ECHO project and there is no limit to the number of editions that one can participate.

Since ECHO follows a volunteer-based participation, confidentiality is a key feature of the project. As a result, all participants must agree to keep their observations, feedback, and related discussions confidential. The observations grids are also anonymous, so the Learning Innovation Office will guarantee that there is complete confidentiality.

Each participation develops as follows:

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Each edition of the ECHO project is organized in three main phases. The first phase is the launching session and participants' registration.

The second phase consists of the observation sessions and feedback meetings, the core of the project. Each participant should have at least one course session observed and should observe a course session of each of their team members. Therefore, the observation sessions and feedback meetings should occur three times, one for each member of the team.

This phase has the following structure:

  • Before the session: the observee (observed instructor) should provide some information about the session: course syllabus, content and context of the session (e.g., What’s the main topic that is going to be taught? Will there be a distinct approach to present the content? What are the conditions of the classroom?), and, optionally, instructor’s main concerns about the session (e.g., Are the students engaged in the content? Is there any concern about the students' participation?).
  • During the session: the observers take notes of what is happening in the session considering, but not limited to, the Observation Guidelines.
  • After the session: Shortly after the observed session, the observee and observers exchange thoughts and insights about the session during a feedback meeting. Afterwards, each observer fills in the Observation Form. 
  • After all the observed sessions: The team reflects on the observed sessions and the feedback meetings (e.g., Was there anything that pleasantly surprised me? What did I learn within this project? Do I have any suggestions to propose?). In this phase, the team can schedule a meeting with the Learning Innovation Office for guidance and support. 


The third and final phase of each edition is the sharing seminar where participants will have the opportunity to share their experiences regarding the ECHO project. The Sharing Seminar of the 3rd Edition will take place on January 24th, 2024, at 12:30 on room 529.

​Learning Innovation Office provides a checklist of each step for the three phases of ECHO.  

Important note: Attending the launching session and the sharing seminar is optional but highly recommended.
 

Important values to highlight:
 

Confidentiality and anonymity

It is important that the ECHO project participants commit to keeping confidentiality regarding the observed sessions and the exchange of thoughts that followed it. The observation grids must be filled in anonymously.

 

Cordiality

Participants must promote a cordial sharing environment where there’s a respectful openness for giving and receiving feedback. The feedback must be constructive, objective, appropriate, descriptive, and substantiated.

The feedback that is received must be valued. If the observed professor doesn’t understand the feedback that was given, the observer professor must explain it in a different way (e.g., using examples) to help the observed professor to understand.

FAQs

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The observation teams will be a group of three faculty and/or instructors and will be as diverse as possible. The main diversity feature that we will try to attend is the scientific area of the participants, aiming to have feedback that focus on pedagogical aspects and not as much on scientific aspects. When forming the teams, we will also try to ensure that all team members are from the same education scope (undergraduate/graduate/executive education).

The participation on this project is on a volunteering-base and there is no formal evaluation. The main aim is to reflect on teaching practices, providing and giving feedback. To promote a collaborative environment and avoid work-related hierarchic and power issues, the groups will be built with faculty of different scientific backgrounds.

Within the scope of one semester (which has about a thousand working hours), this project will roughly take:

  • 1 hour to the launching session (optional)
  • 30 minutes to schedule the course sessions to observe (this can be done in a lunch break with your team)
  • 15 minutes to share the basic information of your course session with your colleagues
  • 1 to 3 hours two times to observe part of your peers’ course sessions (or the full session)
  • 15-30 minutes three times to the feedback meeting (this can be done in a lunch break with your team)
  • 10-15minutes to fulfil the observation form
  • 1 hour to attend the sharing seminar (optional)

So, it’s less than 1% of your semester workload. A 1% with a possible impact on up to 100% of your classroom time.

If you have any other questions, please contact us:

learninginnovation.clsbe@ucp.pt

 

References

Hammersley-Fletcher, L., & Orsmond, P. (2005). Reflecting on reflective practices within peer observation. Studies in Higher Education, 30(2), 213–224.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070500043358

Tenenberg, J. (2016). Learning through observing peers in practice. Studies in Higher Education, 41(4), 756–773.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.950954

Torres, A. C., Lopes, A., Valente, J. M. S., & Mouraz, A. (2017). What catches the eye in class observation? Observers’ perspectives in a multidisciplinary peer observation of teaching program. Teaching in Higher Education, 22(7), 822–838.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2017.1301907

Mais informações

 

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