Instructional Peer Coaching will provide PALNI instruction librarians with peer feedback on their instruction. The program will take place each Spring semester, and librarians can sign up during as many semesters as they would like to participate.
Once signed up, each librarian will be assigned a partner from another PALNI school. After an orientation session for all participants held virtually, the two partners will be expected to meet either physically or virtually to discuss their goals for the program. Then, during the spring semester, each participant will observe, ideally in-person, at least one instruction session given by their partner. After the observation, partners will meet to discuss the session and the observer will give suggestions for improvement.
Included in this guide are a few brief readings for all participants to help familiarize them with peer coaching concepts, and also some best practices, examples, and guidance for the observations.
Peer coaching is not a mentoring program, pairing a more experienced person with a less-experienced one. It is also not a peer evaluation program (summative), which provides an evaluation to administrators.
Rather, it is a voluntary program that pairs those at similar levels who work together to improve their teaching (formative).
NEW: You have two options. First, you can choose to have Ruth or Eric observe you. Or, you can choose the traditional peer coaching method and be assigned a peer, if one is available.
“Valuable experience - I literally tweaked and used an activity that my peer used in her library session the following week.”
- Jessica Mahoney, Franklin College
“It was so helpful to get a view from outside my library, and conducting an observation encouraged me to think about why I teach the way I do, and to be more intentional going forward.” “Plus, it was fun!”
- Tillie Yoder, Goshen College
"After this experience, I’m more comfortable coming to my peer in the future and asking for their thoughts on my lesson plan.”
- Jessica Mahoney, Franklin College
“It was incredibly helpful to have another pair of eyes and ears in the back of the classroom, to provide a more objective perspective on both the group and my performance. I also found it a fantastic way to keep things from getting stale.”
-Tedra Richter, University of Indianapolis
“This program helped me think critically about how and why I use different teaching methods. It forced me to spend more time thinking about my lesson plan for the class to be observed, which ended up being my favorite class of the semester--despite major technological difficulties!”
- Ruth Szpunar, PALNI
PALNI's Peer Coaching LibGuide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. PALNI’s logos and branding template are not covered by this license, and all rights to such material are reserved.
