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Until recently, the ways in which institutions
and faculty have gathered data from students has changed
relatively little. Too many institutions and faculty rely
exclusively on end-of-course feedback forms that are the same
for all courses. Such traditional end-of-course course
assessments have at least four problems.
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They fail to provide data that can be used for improving
practice, because of these three major problems.
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They are subtly biased in favor of
traditional face-to-face instruction, as most of the
institutional questions tend to measure course organization.
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Sometimes key data are omitted intentionally
because most faculty/course evaluation processes focus on
collecting data for personnel decisions. As a consequence,
they are not well designed to improve teaching.
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These evaluations usually occur at the very
end of a semester, and the results are often not available
for a month or more afterward -- much too late for faculty
to make changes.
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Interfering with the Development of a Culture of Reflective
Practice.
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Because at most institutions,
faculty/students/ administrators don’t have ownership of the
questions or the processes.
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Most forms are produced by external vendors
cannot answer questions such as: “How were the questions
selected?” and “What evidence do you have about their
validity?”
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In general, course evaluation processes are
not consciously designed to help students become more aware
of the kinds of teaching and learning practices that help
them learn.
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Failure to Link Teaching-Learning Practices to Outcomes.
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It is rare for institutional course
evaluations to focus on the practices that have been shown
to produce better learning outcomes.
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For example, discovering that satisfaction
has declined doesn’t give the faculty member much to work
with when trying to figure out how to improve the course.
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Failure to Apply Results in a Consistent Manner.
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