Good teaching supports increased student learning. This connection requires feedback on the course between the student and teacher so that both are able to know and understand what is expected and what occurs in the course. For the first time this semester the campus is using a uniform University-wide course evaluation system for all courses. The faculty was notified about this system by the provost in his Oct. 19 th email to the faculty. The history and specifics of this initiate are briefly described in Renee Braird Snyder's article in this edition of the Newsletter and in-depth information is available at the Course Evaluations web site https://www.irpa.umd.edu/Assessment/crs_eval.shtml .

As with all new initiatives there are pros and cons, and with constructive feedback from faculty and students the University-wide system will evolve to better serve the needs of faculty and students. However, no single evaluation system can be expected to meet the needs of all courses. To address this, the University-wide instrument will in subsequent semesters allow faculty and departments to add questions that are specific to the needs of individual courses and instructors.

What is especially useful about the system is that individual faculty will be able to obtain feedback on their course with little effort on their part. Faculty will be able to access the results from their courses in early 2008. Students will be automatically notified about the project by Institutional Research and Evaluations and encouraged to fill out the on-line survey. Students who fill out the survey will be reward by being granted access to the information from the student questions for courses they may be interested in taking provided that at least 70 percent of the students in the course completed the fall survey. In order to gain access to course information each student must fill out the surveys for all of their fall courses.

The 15-question survey asks for student responses and opinions about a number of course parameters. Several of the items are certain to be of interest to faculty who wish to improve their teaching and student learning. These items include questions that ask: how responsive the instructor was to student concerns, whether the course content kept students engaged, whether students felt they were treated with respect, how intellectually challenging the course was, and how much the student learned. This type of student feedback is necessary if faculty want to address the learning needs of all students in their courses. As with any course evaluation there will be disgruntled students who will vent their displeasure by giving low scores and there will be those students who will rate the course as if it is the “the best thing since ice cream.” Outlying responses of these types while madding and gladdening are of very little use in course improvement. However by looking at the median and mode of the responses a useful snapshot of the course can be obtained that will help the instructor in thinking about whether she or he met their goals for the course and whether they want/need to change one or more things in a subsequent course offering.

Since the University-wide questions will remain constant across courses and semesters, faculty will be able to obtain longitudinal information with little effort on their part since the survey is automatically administered and analyzed. As faculty accumulate feedback from a variety of courses they will be able to identify patterns within their own teaching, e.g. my courses are seen by students as very challenging, students perceive that I am not responsive to their concerns, students seem to be learning a lot or not. This should please all/most faculty. When is the last time that you got this type of useful information for free?

The survey has limitations, all surveys do, and certainly in it present form it will not obtain specific information that you may want or need for your course, e.g. did the group work assignment help students to learn the materials, was the use of clicker beneficial etc?. The University-wide survey is not meant to be the only form of student course feedback or assessment for an instructor, department, college or even the University. Multiple forms of feedback/assessment are needed in every course and program in order to obtain a realistic picture of what works, what doesn't works, what students learned and what should stay as is and what needs to be changed. In my own courses I always give my own end of the course survey in addition to the one required by my college. I need student feedback on course specific aspects in order to reflect on how effective the course was for student learning and how effective my teaching practices were. Despite many years of teaching, I occasionally find surprises between my end of the semester impression of the course and those of the students. I would like to report that these are always pleasant surprises but that would be untrue, however even the less-than-pleasant surprises have been useful.

Instructor constructed end of the course evaluations are particularly useful in understanding how well a new pedagogy worked, how students perceived the nature of the course and for facilitating reflections on how one might/should alter course content or pedagogy to better meet the learning needs of all students. I strongly encourage all faculty to provide feedback on the University-wide survey and to develop and use their own end of the course surveys that ask students for specific information about the course that will be meaningful to them in addition to using the University-wide survey. Your survey can be as simple as one or two open-ended questions, a set of Likert-scale questions, or a combination. If you need help in designing your own end of the semester evaluation/feedback form stop by CTE, we are always happy to help find or build an instrument that meets your needs and ask the questions whose answers you want to know.

 By Spencer Benson
Director of CTE