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Resources l
Services l
Building a Culture of Evidence l
Flashlight Evaluation Handbook
Table of Contents TLT/Flashlight tools and resources for student
course evaluation are based on several premises:
- Students, faculty and administrators should all be
engaged in the process, understanding why and how
this evidence is being gathered and how it's being used
to support good teaching and learning; every survey and
every report changes relationships a bit. Do you
want your course evaluation system to build community?
help students and faculty think about learning?
- Rethinking student course evaluation is likely to
lead to 'dangerous
discussions' (how do we evaluate faculty performance?
how important is it for faculty to use evidence to guide
teaching? what skills do we need to develop so we can
'ask the right questions' and interpret the evidence?
how can we educate students to take responsibility for
their education?).
- Such engagement is easier to develop when student
response forms can be tailored to unique information
needs about each course and faculty member , and when
different stakeholders can contribute questions (we call this
a matrix survey).
- Student course evaluation should be designed to help
build the institution's 'culture
of evidence.' For example, when instructors
survey students during the term and use findings to
guide
the course, students are more likely to respond thoughtfully
to end-of-course evaluation. Student course evaluation
ought to be an object lesson in well-designed, useful
social research.
Resources for
student course evaluation:
The TLT Group's work on this topic began
with a FIPSE-funded project called
Better Teaching through Assessment (BeTA)
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