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Resources l
Services l
Building a Culture of Evidence l
Flashlight Evaluation Handbook
Table of Contents TLT/Flashlight ideas about student
course evaluation are based on several assumptions:
- A course evaluation system ought to help students
play a more constructive role in improving the academic
program, helping them learn to take appropriate
responsibility for their own educations.
- Today it's possible to customize the feedback form
for every course. (We call this a matrix survey).
For example, questions about feedback on essays can be
sent to courses designated as writing-intensive. If
only 25 courses meets in rooms with a 'smart boards,'
the Information Technology Service could ask questions
addressed only to the students in those 25 courses.
- This kind of empowering approach becomes much
stronger (and can probably attract even higher response
rates) if students get short surveys a number of times
during the semester, so there's time for them to get
reports indicating that they have been heard.
- Student course evaluation conducted in this ways
contributes to
'strengthening
the institution's 'culture of evidence.')
- This approach to student course evaluation should
also provide an object lesson for all students in what
good applied social science research can look like.
(Unfortunately, a paper-based form that asks the same
questions of every course, every term, and never reports
on results to students - that often teaches students
scorn for survey research.)
TLT Group 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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