Student evaluations

Becoming a critically reflective teacher involves four lenses: your colleagues' perceptions (e.g., peer observations), educational theory and research, autobiography (e.g., personal formative experiences as a learner), and your students' eyes (Brookfield, 2017). Asking your students to give feedback on your teaching plays a vital role in improving the student experience and tertiary practice through:

  • individual reflection on teaching;
  • reflection on the quality of a course and its overall delivery;
  • provision of information to the University on the overall quality of courses and teaching;
  • supporting evidence for promotions or continuation applications, or teaching awards.

(see 'Quick Guide to SET Reports' on the UoA SET resource page)

Getting to know what students think about your teaching

There are several ways of collecting student feedback on the course and your delivery with  summative evaluation (SET) being one form of evaluation of teaching. Other forms of monitoring the student experience,  independent of system generated SETs for the University, should complement SETs and can be undertaken during and after the completion of a particular session/module/course as formative evaluation of teaching, for example via: 

  • Critical incident questionnaire (CIQ)
  • One minute paper or sticky notes after class
  • Muddiest point
  • Student focus groups
  • In-class polls or clickers
  • Learning audit

Stephen Brookfield's CIQ  seeks to capture on a single page what was most engaging or puzzling, the most helpful action or the most distanced moment for students in a learning situation. How is it administered?  Run the CIQ in the final 5 minutes of class and provide a summary to students the following week. This not only closes the feedback loop but also models good teaching practice, and can be an early warning device of challenges ahead in student progress.

See Stephen Brookfield's webpage for further resources and publications in this space.

A range of templates for SET and formative evaluations including a Five/Twelve-item Fast Forward Feedback survey can be found in the UoA Qualtrics Library.