（Source: Michaels Research, December 31, 2024)
Teaching evaluation is the main way to improve teaching quality. Feedback information from students is critical but not sufficient. How to comprehensively measure course teaching and provide teachers with the most valuable evaluation information? This article uses Stanford University as an example to give you detailed answers.
“Multiple parties involved” and “leaving evidence” are the core principles of Stanford University’s teacher teaching evaluation or course evaluation. Professor Susie Brubaker-Cole, the w88 casino’s deputy provost, said, “Students are the direct ‘beneficiaries’ of teachers’ teaching, but students’ feedback and evaluation of teachers is not enough. We require other teachers and teaching experts from the Student Affairs Department to also participate in the evaluation.” Professor Brabaker-Cole directly leads the w88 casino’s Student Affairs Department (Student Affairs), and the Evaluation & Research Center under the department is specifically responsible for the evaluation of w88 casino teachers. “In addition to the evaluation results, teachers also need to prepare course-related materials so that the w88 casino can comprehensively judge the teacher’s teaching effectiveness.”
The evaluation needs to come from the target
“Schools use ‘effectiveness’ to measure teaching because the key to teachers’ teaching is reflected in students’ gains.” Professor Brabec-Cole explained, “The most important thing is that teachers should set specific and measurable student learning goals for this course, and subsequent evaluation work should be centered around the learning goals.” In this regard, the Evaluation and Research Center proposed that teachers need to consider the following issues when formulating learning goals: "What is the core content (such as concepts, methods, theories, etc.) that students need to understand or master at the end of the course." "After studying this course, students should develop and skillfully apply the abilities or skills (such as problem-solving ability, qualitative or quantitative analysis ability, learning ability, etc.) (academic writing ability, reading ability, communication ability, etc.). "What kind of knowledge system can students build by studying this course, or how can this course help students build their professional knowledge system?" "Considering from the professional field, what professional-related questions can students answer after completing the course (such as development status, practical application, etc.)"
Different professional fields have different focuses of learning objectives. Judging from the actual situation of w88 casino courses, the learning objectives of a certain sociology major course are:
❖ Be able to incorporate research results and scientific conclusions into the writing process, and ensure that the argument of the article is clear and persuasive;
❖ Be able to use quantitative analysis methods to verify hypotheses and correctly cite existing research conclusions;
❖ Ability to evaluate theories or research in this major/discipline area.
The learning objectives of a certain engineering major are:
❖ Students can explain and demonstrate the role of analysis and modeling in engineering design and practical applications;
❖ Facing the given (practical) problem, students can choose the corresponding probability model and obtain useful information to solve the problem from the observation data;
❖ Able to establish mathematical models to describe engineering problems;
❖ Be able to comprehensively use mathematical methods, flow charts, and professional vocabulary to describe the characteristics and connections of different engineering systems;
❖ Ability to select appropriate mathematical models based on specific problems and propose the best solution to the problem.
Learning goals are crucial to teaching evaluation. There are two types of evaluation data sources. One is student evaluation data and the other is peer evaluation data. “Teaching evaluation questions need to be centered around learning goals and closely linked to teaching effectiveness.” Professor Brabec-Cole said that the Evaluation and Research Center has put forward four requirements for the design principles of teaching evaluation questions. First, First, the goal needs to be clear. Each question can only have one question. For example, "Do you think it is necessary to reduce the number of tests?" is better than "Do you think it is necessary to reduce the number of tests and increase the amount of practical exercises?" Secondly, the problem statement should be concise and easy to understand. Avoid using professional vocabulary such as "formative assessment" and "guided teaching" and ask questions in a language that students can understand. In addition, the questions need to be neutral and objective, and cannot have a tendency to praise or criticize. "Overall, you don't like this teacher?" "Does the teacher assign too much reading, which is difficult for students to accept?" Words and sentences such as this are inappropriate. Finally, teachers need to clarify what kind of feedback they want to get from the question to determine the method and type of question to design multiple-choice options or use open-ended questions. "For the student evaluation section, we recommend that teachers set at least one open-ended question to understand students' specific views on course improvements."
Three parties participated in the comprehensive evaluation
As mentioned at the beginning, the w88 casino attaches great importance to the "multi-party participation" teaching evaluation model, and not only students participate. However, student evaluation also takes many forms.
Student participation in various forms
As the course progresses, students will evaluate teaching through the software platform at mid-term and at the end of the semester. The Evaluation and Research Center has produced evaluation question templates for different types of courses. Teachers can personalize their own evaluation questions based on the actual situation of the course and question design principles. The teaching evaluation software platform has a 'customization' function. Teachers can enter course learning objectives, course teaching links (such as discussions, experimental operations, final projects, etc.), etc., and the platform will automatically generate a question questionnaire for reference or use. Obviously, the mid-term evaluation questions tend to reflect students' feelings about the current stage of learning, allowing teachers to make timely adjustments; the final evaluation mainly measures students' mastery of learning objectives. At the end of this article are examples of general questions and customized questions for the final evaluation.
Teachers can apply to the Evaluation and Research Center during the mid-term period, and the center's curriculum consultant will go to the classroom to organize students to carry out group feedback activities (Small Group Feedback Session). Group feedback activities are conducted in the fourth to sixth weeks of each semester. Teachers voluntarily apply for them, and the activity time is about 20 minutes. In the absence of the teaching teacher, the course consultant divides the students into groups of 6 to 8 people, guides the students to conduct group discussions on teaching opinions and suggestions, comprehensively organizes the views of each group, focuses on understanding the difficulties encountered by the students in learning, and draws an observation report. Afterwards, the consultant discussed with the teaching teacher based on the observation report and proposed directions and methods for course improvement. In addition to group feedback activities, teachers can also apply for classroom video analysis. The w88 casino will arrange for a dedicated person to record the course video. The consultant and the teacher will jointly "review" the course and provide improvement suggestions from the perspective of teaching methods (such as active learning methods).
In addition to current student data, the w88 casino will also collect alumni information to understand their feedback on teachers’ teaching. “We are particularly concerned about the views of recent graduates, and will specifically understand their opinions on certain courses in the survey, and return the results to the teachers. ” said Professor Brabec-Cole.
#PEER EVALUATION FOCUS ON TEACHING
Peers include teachers from the same department and curriculum evaluation experts from the w88 casino. The evaluation forms include classroom observation, course material evaluation and other evaluations. Classroom observations are usually carried out by well-trained curriculum evaluation experts, who use evaluation forms designed by the w88 casino to produce systematic and comparable evaluation data, focusing mainly on teachers' teaching methods, curriculum design structure and student learning evaluation methods. Before entering the classroom, evaluation experts need to clarify the learning objectives of the course with the teacher and understand the teaching materials prepared by the teacher. Teachers in the same department focus on the quality of course teaching materials, including course syllabus, course assignments, test papers, student papers, online learning materials, etc. The results of teacher evaluations are often presented anonymously and are mainly used to improve the quality of teacher teaching.
#Teacher Reflection Improve Materials
In addition to student and peer evaluation data, the w88 casino recommends that teachers reflect on course teaching and prepare teaching portfolios so that the Evaluation and Research Center can make a comprehensive and objective evaluation. Teaching portfolios include descriptive texts written by teachers, such as course teaching ideas or methods, efforts and attempts at innovative course teaching, as well as empirical materials including course syllabus, class assignments, student works or papers, etc. Teachers need to electronically convert these materials into documents and pictures for easy inspection.
“The w88 casino attaches great importance to the fact that all evaluation processes must be documented. Since 2015, it has used an online system to conduct student and peer evaluations, which greatly simplifies the work process and makes it easier to query and access teaching evaluation data.” Professor Brabec-Cole said that in order to ensure the objectivity of teaching evaluation, Objective factors that are difficult for teachers to control, including the number of students and students’ learning status of prior courses, are also taken into consideration. “In short, teaching evaluation revolves around teaching objectives, and the results are given priority to teachers to improve teaching effectiveness. Decisions such as promotion evaluation are jointly determined by the teaching evaluation results and teachers’ research, consultation and other aspects of work.”
Examples of student evaluation questions
General question
❖How often or how often do you participate in class discussions or group discussions? (Options set to different percentages or times)
❖How often do you participate in online discussions in this course? (Options set to different percentages or times)
❖How did you gain from this course? (The options are "great gain", "more gain", "average", "less", "rarely")
❖What do you think of the teacher’s teaching level? (The options are "very good", "good", "average", "poor" and "very poor")
❖How much study time do you spend on this course each week (including after-class study and discussion, etc.)? (option is number of hours)
❖How well do the various parts of this course connect? (The options are "very logical", "logical", "moderately logical", "not logical")
❖What knowledge or abilities have you mastered by studying this course? (open answer)
❖What comments or suggestions would you like to give to students who are about to choose this course? (open answer)
❖Do you have any other comments about this course? (open answer)
Customization issues
❖How have you achieved this learning goal (formulate 1 to 4 questions of this type based on the actual situation of the course)? (The options are "Completely achieved", "Basically achieved", "General" and "Basically not achieved")
❖How effective is this portion of the course (teachers can list conceptual explanations, readings, online sessions, final projects, etc.)? (The options are "very useful", "useful", "average" and "not at all useful")
Main references:Stanford University website.
