Evaluating
Teaching
Evaluating teacher's own teaching
There
are five basic sources of information that teachers can use to evaluate
their teaching.
Good teaching: The top ten requirements
Explain
the top ten requirements
Gathering Feedback on Teaching and Learning
The
purpose of this web page is to provide faculty with ideas and tools
for gathering and interpreting these data. The table below links you
to materials appropriate for the type of feedback you'd like to have.
It provides ideas for getting three different kinds of feedback (informal
prose, surveys, and oral feedback) from two external sources (peers
and students) and one internal source, yourself.
Neil Fleming's 10 Evaluation Questions
Neil
Fleming's 10 Evaluation Questions
"In-Course
Optimization of Teaching Quality" Presentation (PDF file)
This article briefly reports an alternative system for assessing quality
teaching in tertiary institutions and focuses on the student feedback
part of system.
Fast Feedback
Much
more effective are fast feedback activities that take place during the
semester. Informal sampling of students' comprehension of the subject
matter will enable you to gauge how and what students are learning.
And informal requests for constructive criticism will help you identify
which teaching methods best contribute to your students' understanding
of the material. There are few strategies.
Evaluating Teaching Through Portfolios
This
page provides perspectives on who evaluates teaching through portfolios
and how.
Evaluation of
Teaching
In
the last ten years the evaluation of teaching has become a widely accepted
practice in higher education, but methods vary widely from school to
school and from department to department. Recent national interest in
the quality of teaching in higher education has spawned a movement to
include teaching effectiveness in the criteria for promotion and tenure
decisions, even in some research universities.
Improving
the Evaluation of College Teaching
The ideas described in this essay came out of deliberations at my university
which has required student evaluations of all courses for several years.
This succeeded in giving administrators a numerical basis for assessing
the teaching activities of the faculty in annual performance evaluations.
But many professors were bothered by the idea of having their teaching
measured by one number or a set of numbers from student questionnaires.
Eventually pressure built up to find a better solution to the problem.
Evaluating Your Own Teaching
I
will offer a basic definition of evaluation, state a few reasons why
one should invest time and effort into evaluation, describe five techniques
for evaluation, and identify resources for helping us evaluate and improve
our teaching.
The Evaluation of College Teaching
After
studying the problem at length, the committee eventually came to the
conclusion that better evaluation would require two fundamental adjustments.
The first was to establish the capability of examining multiple dimensions
of teaching, something more than just what the teacher does in the classroom.
The second was to deal with the need for multiple sources of information,
something more than an exclusive reliance on student evaluations of
teachers.
Assessing New Practices
Don't
abandon an innovation if it does not work well the first time. You may
need to learn what to do to make the innovation work right, before you
see the desired advantages. If it doesn't work after three honest tries,
then it may be fair to conclude that "it doesn't work for you."
But give it at least three tries before you reach that conclusion.
Summative Evaluation
The
main purpose of such a summative rating of instruction is to provide
information on your performance as a teacher. This type of evaluation
is useful for both you and your supervisor to examine. It gives an overview
of the students' impression of the entire course, their learning, and
your teaching.
Formative Evaluation
Mid-term
formative evaluation is used for teaching improvement. It produces information
which instructors can use for teaching improvement during a course.
The instructor is in control of how and when the evaluation occurs,
and the method of eliciting feedback can be crafted to match the needs
of the course.
Information from Yourself - evaluating your own teaching (In Formative
Evaluation)
Evaluating
your own teaching to help you become aware of what is going on in class
Information from Students (In Formative Evaluation)
As
an instructor, you are constantly evaluating students and giving them
feedback on their work. However, there is a real advantage to receiving
regular feedback from your students about your teaching. One of the
simplest ways to do this is, of course, is to have a Suggestion Box
where students can drop their ideas. Or....
Information from your Supervisor (In Formative Information)
You
may also want to ask your supervisor to corroborate the evaluations
by others yourself, your students, or your colleagues by observing your
teaching or by discussing others' evaluations with you.
The Typical Peer Cooperation Process
Peer
Cooperation for teaching improvement is a process whereby individuals
seek to increase their teaching effectiveness through the support and
advice of colleagues. The dozen faculty members of the Peer Cooperation
group were all volunteers who sought to gain some experience with the
peer cooperation process both by having their teaching observed and
by being an observer of teaching.
Collaborative Peer Review: The Role of Faculty in Improving College
Teaching
Teaching
is "the business of the business--the activity that is central
to all colleges and universities" (Pew Higher Education Research
Program 1989, p. 1). But teaching is not always taken seriously and
too often is relegated to a position below that of other professional
activities.
Improving Teacher Evaluations
Teacher
evaluations are often designed to serve two purposes: to measure teacher
competence and to foster professional development and growth. This digest
discusses characteristics of effective teacher evaluations and some
common teacher concerns.
Collaborative Peer Review: The Role of Faculty in Improving College
Teaching
Teaching is "the business of the business--the activity that is
central to all colleges and universities" (Pew Higher Education
Research Program 1989, p. 1). But teaching is not always taken seriously
and too often is relegated to a position below that of other professional
activities.
Making Effective Use of Peers
Your peers can significantly influence your academic performance, either
positively or negatively.
If You've Got It, Flaunt It: Uses And Abuses of Teaching Portfolios
A
memo from the Provost appears in all faculty mailboxes one morning,
announcing that from now on every candidate for tenure and promotion
must submit a teaching portfolio along with the usual research documentation.
It Takes One To Know One
Something
(maybe the only thing) that most university administrators and educational
reformers agree on is that the teaching evaluation methods used on their
campuses leave a lot to be desired. The administrators often use inadequacies
in the usual procedure (tabulating course-end student ratings) to justify
the low weighting generally given to teaching in tenure and promotion
decisions.
What Do They Know, Anyway?
Sooner
or later, the conversation at the committee meeting or in the faculty
lounge turns to student ratings of instructors. It's a sure bet that
within six seconds, someone will announce that ratings are meaningless
- students don't know enough to evaluate the quality of their instruction.
What Do They Know, Anyway? Making Evaluations Effective
I
tried to persuade you that contrary to conventional faculty lounge wisdom,
student evaluations provide reliable indicators of teaching quality:
they correlate well with retrospective evaluations submitted by graduating
seniors and alumni and tend to be higher for instructors whose students
do best on common examinations.
Preparing For Peer Observation, A Guide Book
The
process of peer observation involves faculty peers that review an instructor's
performance through classroom observation and examination of instructional
materials and course design. Observations of classroom behavior are
intended for reviewing the teaching process and its possible relationship
to learning.
Observation Checklist
This
checklist is intended to help both who are being observed and those
who are observing. The focus is on the mechanics of the classroom interaction,
not on the content of the course.
Classroom Observation Form (PDF file)
