Peer Coaching

A confidential, peer-to-peer program that provides a unique opportunity to enrich and enhance your teaching practice. A peer coach from outside your discipline visits and observes your class, paying special attention to three focal areas that you identify, and then shares observations as you strategize effective solutions together.

Peer coaching requests are accepted until October 1st in the fall semesters and until March 1st in the spring semesters.

Peer Coaching Request Form

Peer Coaching at USF has two core principles:

  1. Professionals benefit from collaboration. We often collaborate in our research and creative work, and we collaborate in our service to the University, to our disciplines, and to our communities. Peer coaching is a way for us to collaborate in our teaching.
  2. Reflection and self-assessment are essential to growth. You are the owner of your pedagogy; a peer coach focuses on supporting you in making your own good decisions about your own teaching.

Peer coaching works at any stage of your teaching process, from your first thoughts about a new course to the post-semester moment when you receive Teaching Effectiveness Survey reports. From the early stages of designing or revising a syllabus or assignment to mid-semester feedback or adjustments to reflecting on a course that you’ve concluded, a peer coach can help.

The process is 100% confidential. You are the owner of the results, and a peer coach will never report results to anyone other than you. For this reason, peer coaches will not write letters of recommendation based on their coaching experience. However, coaches may provide written feedback or documentation. It's up to you if (and how) you wish to share this information.

If requested, CTE will provide a letter to you, documenting that you participated in the peer coaching process.

The First Step: Flexible Consultation Request

The Peer Coaching process begins with a conversation about your goals. Working with your peer coach in a short initial meeting, you’ll decide on what next steps will be most valuable for you.

Next steps might involve:

  • A focus on syllabi or other course documents
  • Soliciting and analyzing mid-semester feedback from students
  • Interpreting and strategizing end-of-semester feedback from students
  • Observing your coach’s class and/or inviting the coach to observe yours

In each of these areas, a peer coach’s role is to clarify your goals, serve as a resource and connect you with resources, help you develop your teaching practices, and help you tell the story of the great things happening in your classroom.

Start the process with the quick request form linked above. We’ll put one of our peer coaches in touch with you.

Further Reading

If you're interested in learning more about the benefits of peer coaching, check out our reading list.