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1. Evaluation and Assessment
1.3. Evaluation
Designing Your Own Supplemental Evaluation Methods
There are two different types of questions which are often used in designing supplemental evaluations to be given to students: quantitative and open-ended.
Each type of question can provide unique insights into your teaching, and in many cases, a mix of question types can provide the best feedback for monitoring your teaching effectiveness.
Quantitative Questions
Asking students to respond to specific questions on an ordinal or numerical scale can provide you with clear feedback signals with which you can document your teaching effectiveness, improve specific behaviors or course design issues, and learn about your students' needs.
There are many different scales you can ask students to use in their responses to these questions, each of which may be appropriate depending on the situation and your goals. Some choices of scales used in student evaluations, in order of their usefulness for supplemental evaluations, are:
- Frequency scales (e.g., Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, Almost Always), which are most useful for measuring behaviors you might wish to change,
- Agree/Disagree scales (e.g., Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree), which can address almost any issue and give very clear signals of problem issues, and
- Quality scales (e.g., Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent), which are very general but can be difficult to interpret and respond to because they may not identify what kind of change is needed.
You might want students to give quantitative responses to questions on some of the following:
- instructor's behaviors such as organization, clarity, concern for individual students, enthusiasm, use of examples, or presentation style (clear voice, readable visual aids, suitable pace, etc.)
- features of the course such as clear goals or appropriate level of difficulty
- type of learning students see as emphasized such as gaining factual knowledge, learning fundamental principles, developing specific skills, or learning to apply course material
- other students' contributions to learning such as stimulating discussion or helping in group activities
- background about the students such as class (freshmen, sophomore, etc.), effort in the course (number of hours per week devoted to the course), or reasons for taking the course (elective vs. required)
Open-ended Questions
While specific questions can give you valuable feedback, some of the most useful feedback you can receive comes from comments which address issues you may never have thought of.
Open-ended questions can encourage students to "brainstorm" and share their perceptions of the course and instructor. These questions can be particularly effective if you explicitly ask students to write comments to you when you administer the evaluation.
You might want students to answer open-ended questions about the following, particularly in early evaluations during the 4th-6th week of a semester:
- strengths of the instructor's teaching and/or the course (e.g., what do you want the instructor to continue to do, what most helps your learning?)
- suggestions for improvement
- expectations about the course and ways in which they are or are not being met
You might also ask open-ended questions about the following in end-of-semester evaluations:
- opinions about specific course materials such as texts, lab procedures, assignment guidelines, or any new features that may have been incorporated in the course
- the perceived value of various learning activities such as variation within or between the instructor's presentations, the range of assignments or the choice of projects
Ideas for Questions
An Effective Teacher/TA... lists over 40 characteristics of effective teaching which have been asked on other student evaluation forms. While this list is hardly complete, it may give you ideas for issues you would like to assess or provide sample wordings for difficult questions.
Additional Source: Raoul A. Arreola, Developing a Comprehensive Faculty Evaluation System, (Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing), 1995. Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence Brian Zikmund-Fisher / Rea Freeland, February 1998
Adapted from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University
