Open Doors: A New Take on Teaching Observations

I’ve long been in favor of teachers visiting each other’s classrooms, and not just for the purpose of evaluation. For many of us in higher ed, what we do in the classroom is professional activity observed only by our students, and we seldom (or never) get to see how our colleagues go about the work of teaching. Sometimes we’ll be able to read others’ assignments, if they’re posted online or — as in my department — accidentally left in the photocopy machine. But actually watching and learning fr...