Evaluating Your Teaching

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Evaluating Your Teaching

• Chris Mitchell, Economics Network

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Schedule

• Setting the scene
• In your opinion
• Case Study Mohammad Alauddin
• Case Study Tommy Tang
• Alternative forms of evaluation
• Tips and tricks
• Summing up

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Quick Survey

• How is the quality of your teaching evaluated?
• Course evaluation questionnaire ?
• Student assessment ?
• Peer-review ?
• Self-evaluation ?
• I dont know ?
• It isnt ?

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What are you evaluating?

• You as a teacher
• The student
• The course content
• The course structure

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In your opinion

1. The student is always right
2. Student assessment is the best measure of my
   success as a teacher
3. I am not the best person to evaluate my teaching
4. Evaluation is best done at the end of a course

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The student is always right

• Yes
• Consensus of opinion
• Factual elements
• Difficult to complain

• No
• Not always wrong
• Not the only source
• Feedback not always well targeted
• Assumption about the student

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Assessment is the best measure of success

• Yes

• No
• Consensus is no

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I am not the best person to evaluate my teaching

• Yes
• Partly- necessary condition of success

• No
• Peer as observer
• Will colleague be honest?
• Distinction between assessment and evaluation
• Need structure and purpose with peer review

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Evaluation is best done at the end

• Yes
• More convenient
• Tradition
• More general idea

• No
• Too late for that course
• Exams alter perception
• Best done in intervals

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Self-assessment

• How do you think that it went?
• Non-verbal feedback
• Verbal feedback
• Record your teaching

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Peer-assessment

• Agree a procedure for observation and feedback
• Be honest
• Choose your peer carefully
• Develop an action plan

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Involving students

• Interviews
• Student-devised questionnaires
• Group self-appraisal

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10 tips for questionnaire design

• Identify objectives
• Provide supporting text
• Keep questions simple
• Provide warm-up questions
• Dont leave important questions until the end
• Ensure that the form is not overcrowded
• Group questions into themes
• Provide a neutral option
• Give students time to fill it in
• Pilot your questionnaire

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5 donts of questionnaire analysis

• Dont analyse results immediately
• Dont compare scores across staff
• Dont calculate mean scores
• Dont forget to write an action plan
• Dont read too much into the results