Evaluation of Teaching
ESDM016 DR EMMA KENNEDY25/11/15
What makes higher education valuable?
You have a younger relative who is choosing a university course (they are choosing between universities, they already know the subject).
What aspects of the institution and degree course would you tell them to investigate in order to make this decision, and why?
Classroom facilities?
Staff-student ratio?
Library facilities?
Employability?
Contact hours?
Assessment methods?
NSS results? Dropout rate?
What is evaluation? From Ellington, Percival and Race (1988) Handbook of Education Technology:
"Evaluation is the collection of, analysis and interpretation of information about any aspect of a programme of education or training as part of a recognised process of judging its effectiveness, its efficiency and any other outcomes it may have."
•Used to help improve teaching in an ongoing process Formative•Used to make personnel decisions: is X a good teacher?Summative
Common questions
Why am I evaluating teaching practice?
What am I evaluating?
What are the sources of
information?
What methods can I use?
Common evaluation methods
Observation of
teachingIn-class surveys
Online evaluation
formsInformal
questions
External examinati
on to evaluate assessme
nt
Personal reflection
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method?
Who carries out evaluation?
Student evaluation• Informal• Formal• In-class• Online
Peer observation• In dept,
school, Trust
• In PGCAP or similar
Self-evaluation• Reflective
exercise on PGCAP or CILT
• Ongoing development activity
Observation by mentor• Probatio
n mentor
• SADM/CAPD mentor
External evaluation• External
observation of teaching
• External examiner evaluates assessment process
Why evaluate? Internal drivers
Self-improvement of teaching and students’ learning
Wish to know what worked and what didn’t – development of teaching and action research
Help own productivity and satisfaction
External drivers
QAA
Internal department quality
Professional Bodies (e.g. NHS standards)
Promotion?
Reputation
Student satisfaction
What would you do?Pick a scenario from the
handout
In your scenario: do you need to evaluate
your teaching?
If so, which evaluation method/s
would be most effective?
Come up with an Evaluation Action
Plan: when, where, who and how will you
evaluate?
Issues with evaluationStudent evaluations mirror performance (& teacher effectiveness?) Clayson (2009), ‘Student Evaluations of Teaching: Are they related to what
students learn?’ Journal of Marketing Education 31:1, 16-30. This meta-analysis discovers a small relationship between positive evaluation and effective learning but that it differs between disciplines and teaching contexts.
Gender bias in student evaluations Driscoll and Hunt (2014), ‘What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student
Ratings of Teaching’ Innovative Higher Education 40, 291-303. This study examines student ratings of teachers of online courses – students rated the same teacher lower when they thought it was a woman than when they thought it was a man.
Interesting tool on gender bias in SET (using ratemyprofessor.com: http://benschmidt.org/profGender/
Statistical problems with Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) Stark and Freishtat (2014) find that SET overall throws up lots of statistical
problems and caution against measuring performance by SET alone.
Do these issues mean that we shouldn’t evaluate?