Instructional Consultation with Feedback in Higher Education

Abstract

Since the early 1970s many colleges, universities, junior colleges, and technical and vocational schools have established faculty development programs to improve teaching. An integral part of many of these faculty development programs is instructional consultation with feedback. Most often instructional consultation consists of a consultant visiting the classroom of an instructor, then feeding back to the instructor the information that he or she has gathered from the visit. However, many consultants who provide this service are uncertain about what constitutes effective practice. Though some instructional consultants have received short-term instruction or on-the-job training, most instructional consultants report that they are selftaught and practice instructional consultation the seat of their pants. This lack of formal training is exacerbated by a paucity of literature; instructional consultants have very few resources to draw upon. Most writings on the methods of providing instructional consultation focus on attitudes and philosophical issues; others are grounded in personal experience rather than in systematic research or theoretical principles.