Carnegie Mellon University

Eberly Center

Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation

Classroom Observations

Having a colleague observe your classroom can be a useful way to get immediate feedback about your strengths and weaknesses as an instructor, as well as concrete, contextualized suggestions for improvement. The Eberly Center provides this service to any faculty member or graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, regardless of experience level. The feedback we provide is strictly for you: we ensure strict confidentiality.

To ensure that observations are as productive as possible, we recommend that you meet with an Eberly consultant before the first classroom observation to:

  • discuss the goals of the course
  • discuss the goals of the particular class being observed
  • talk about any particular concerns or requirements you have regarding the observation
  • share relevant course materials
  • discuss specific aspects of your teaching you would like the observer to provide feedback on

You should also meet with the consultant again after the observation to go over feedback, ask questions, discuss applicable strategies, and (if the class was videotaped) review and discuss the videotape together.

You can request follow-up observations as well.

Set up a classroom observation.

Your colleagues at the Eberly Center have considerable experience conducting classroom observations.
CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person!