Evaluation techniques

Questionnaires

These don’t have to be limited to end-of-unit surveys administered by our universities. We can develop our own surveys to use within the semester. The cautionary note though is student survey fatigue. So make them brief and to the point. It may be useful to ask a colleague or a student from another class to see if your survey questions are clear and accessible. A very specific survey question that can be administered at the end of any class is to ask students to write down and submit to you what they thought was the ‘muddiest point’ from the class. The academic is then in a position to clarify those points at the beginning of the next class. Resources which discuss questionnaire design include: the FAO corporate document repository; Deakin University's Questionnaire design [pdf, 153KB]; and Harvard University's Program on Survey Research.

Stop/Start/Continue

You can gain useful feedback from a group by asking them to individually write down what they think you might stop doing, start doing and continue doing in order to better help them to learn. In this way, students can let you know what they value about your teaching while also letting you know what doesn't work for them. It's not clear if this technique was first noted in the education or the management literature. The management People Results website provides a good example of facilitating a Start/Stop/Continue discussion. 

The one-minute paper

At the end of a teaching session, either face to face or online, ask students to write down the most important thing that they learnt from the session, and the muddiest or most confusing concept in the session. This technique lets you know what students have learnt, what they've missed, and any confusing points. View the On Course Workshop website for an example of facilitating a one-minute paper. 

Buzz groups

Buzz groups consist of approximately three people who are tasked with discussing a particular question. They can use very little time and provide useful feedback to academics. Websites which discuss the use of buzz groups include: the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit and the Training and Development World.

Student-generated statements

For this technique, individual students are asked to write four to six statements and three recommendations about some part of, or all of, the unit they are studying. Pairs of students then discuss their statements and recommendations and select four to six statements and three recommendations to take forward. Depending on time, the teacher may continue the process with four, then eight students.

Student focus groups

Sometimes it is useful to ask another person to discuss with your students particular aspects of your unit without you present. This allows the students to remain anonymous. The teacher generates a set of questions that s/he would like discussed. This work can be done outside of class time with a subset of the class, or with the whole class in class time. Resources which discuss the use of student focus groups include: The University of Sydney's Student Focus Group Guidelines [pdf, 125KB] Download Student Focus Group Guidelines [pdf, 125KB] and accompanying activity [pdf, 148KB] Download accompanying activity [pdf, 148KB], and the Carnegie Mellon website on using focus groups to get student feedback.

Digital recording and recall

For this approach, the teacher records a class and asks three or four students to stay directly after the class to discuss a small part of that recording (sometimes 10 minutes of teaching can be discussed for an hour). As students watch the replay of the recording, they are asked to comment on what they are seeing, what worked, and what didn’t work for them and why. This process can also be used with a peer instead of students.

Peer review of teaching

Peer review of teaching is a process and practice designed to provide constructive feedback to teaching academics in a collegial environment. Either you observe another teacher's teaching or a colleague observes you teaching. The objective of peer review is to improve teaching practice and student learning, and to build teaching relationships. Some universities provide resources that teaching academics can use to engage in peer review of their teaching. Often it is helpful if the person being reviewed asks the reviewer to consider specific questions when they watch their teaching or review their online unit material. Resources which discuss peer review of teaching include the following: Curtin University's What is peer review of educational practice? Links to an external site., Curtin University's peer review models, the University of Tasmania's Peer Review of Teaching and Flinders University's Peer Evaluation of Teaching.