Faculty development for the evaluation system: a dual agenda

Abstract

Faculty development for the evaluation process serves two distinct goals. The first goal is to improve the quality of the evaluations submitted by the faculty. Providing an accurate assessment of a learner’s capabilities is a skill and, similar to other skills, can be developed with training. Frame-of-reference training serves to calibrate the faculty’s standard of performance and build a uniform language of the evaluation. Second, areas for faculty professional growth can be identified from data generated from learners’ evaluations of the faculty using narrative comments, item-level comparison reports, and comparative rank list information. This paper presents an innovative model, grounded in institutional experience and review of the literature, to provide feedback to faculty evaluators, thereby improving the reliability of the evaluation process, and motivating the professional growth of faculty as educators.

Keywords:

• faculty development
• students
• residents
• performance data
• evaluation

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Matel Galloway for her administrative support, leading to the success of faculty feedback sessions at our institution. We would like to thank Hesborn Wao, Ph.D., Stephanie Peters, M.A., and Barbara Pearce, M.A., for their thoughtful review of the manuscript.

Author contributions

All authors contributed toward data analysis, drafting and revising the paper and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.