A free professional development workshop, Peers as Colleagues: Using Instructional Observation and Peer Review Constructively, was sponsored by the Center for Teaching Excellence and the Reflective Practice Group on Saturday, September 29, 2001. More than 40 IUP faculty attended. 

The workshop facilitator was Dr. Maryellen Weimer. Dr. Weimer is a professor of Speech Communications at Penn State University who has over 25 years of experience in college teaching. She is editor of The Teaching Professor newsletter and a well-known writer, speaker, and proponent of effective teaching practices. 

	Reflective Practice co-directors at Maryellen Weimer workshop: John Woolcock, Maryellen Weimer, Muhammad Numan, Dee Klein, Mary Ann Cessna, and Terry Ray. Laurel Black absent from photo.

Colleagues can and should be involved in each other's teaching. Too often that involvement only fills mandated peer reviews. Too often it does not build on the strong notions of collegiality that uniquely position faculty members to constructively contribute to each other's efforts to improve teaching and learning in the class. The session explored a number of approaches and activities that faculty colleagues can undertake in the interest of individual and institutional improvement of instruction. Based on well-established findings, faculty learn more about teaching from peers than from any other source. This session demonstrated how to maximize the learning potential of these academic relationships.