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Student
Course Evaluation - home l
Flashlight
Online
Until recently, the ways in which institutions
and faculty have gathered data from students has changed
relatively little: monolithic paper surveys are used to ask the
same questions of all students. Such traditional end-of-course course
assessments have many problems.
Failure
to Provide Data that could be Used to Improve Practice.
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Monolithic paper
surveys are subtly biased in favor of
traditional lecture/textbook formats, 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.
Interference with the Development of a Culture of Reflective
Practice.
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Most course evaluation
systems provide little or no help to faculty and
administrators who would like to adapt questions
originally developed by their colleagues and by peers at
other institutions;
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Most course evaluation
systems provide little or no help to faculty who would
like to pool or compare data with colleagues or with
peers at other institutions;
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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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Most systems are
created only for use with end-of-course surveys,
providing no resources that faculty can use to gather
feedback and improve the course during the term;
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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?”
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.
Failure to Apply Results in a Consistent Manner.
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One institution discovered that there were 26
different evaluation surveys being administered at their
institution
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Another
institution discovered that there are as many ways of
interpreting and using their faculty/course evaluation as there
are schools within the institution
Other
Problems with Paper Surveys
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Open-ended questions can provide valuable feedback but
traditional paper surveys are usually not as good as
online surveys for this purpose - students write less,
and their responses need to be copied somehow in order
to be shared.
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Tendency
to over-estimate quantity and quality of returns.
Many faculty assume that paper surveys receive nearly
100% return rates, but this doesn't account for students
who do not attend the class where the surveys are handed
out, students who turn in blank surveys, and faculty who
do not handout surveys.
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