Peer review of teaching/learning paradigms: A new proposal for engineering education

In higher education, it is common to hear "we have the best engineering education" or "we have talented and experienced instructors who offer the best teaching/learning paradigm," etc. In general, the four main components of higher education are simply students, faculty, facilities, and curriculum. We may have a flawless four components, yet the outcomes may not be as good as expected: an indicative of the crucial need for teaching/learning continuous evaluation. Peer review can be one of the most effective tools for the continuous improvement of higher education offerings. In this paper, the authors form a team to create an effective peer-review process with new and innovative formative and summative functions. A new checklist is being designed and used by two or more reviewers to rate the course syllabus, objectives, outcomes, and activity/assessment tools; this is the summative evaluation phase. Two or more peers used another designed checklist to rate different aspects of the instructor's pedagogy based on a class visit for the formative evaluation. Both lists are shared with the faculty but not used as part of his/her evaluation. A pilot study is performed on the four authors of this paper and four courses of the construction engineering curriculum in the American University in Cairo. The four faculty adopt the process as they believe that what they have excelled in for some time will unequivocally be surpassed by something that is newer and indubitably works better.