Does evaluation improve teaching and learning?

Ballantyne, C. (1999). Improving university teaching: responding to feedback from students (Ch. 11). In N. Zepke, M. Knight, L. Leach, & A. Viskovic (Eds.), Adult learning cultures: challenges and choices in times of change (pp. 155-165). Wellington, NZ: WP Press.

Students main concern was what happened to them and whether staff made any use of the information.

The main issues for them were that it provided evidence of the lecturers’ concern for students.

Most concern to students was that they had no information on whether any action was taken as a result of the surveys.

A prerequisite condition for teachers to make improvements to their teaching as a result of student feedback is that they consider student opinion worth listening to.

When teachers open up the process of teaching and improving teaching to students, they are making their teaching ‘explicit’.

Good teachers need to listen to what students have to say, value their opinions and be open to suggestions students may make for change (Brookfield, 1990).

Hendry, G., Peseta, T., & Barrie, S. (2005). How do we react to student feedback? Synergy, 22, 3-4. Retrieved from http://www.itl.usyd.edu.au/synergy/article.cfm?articleID=262

 

The main point of this article is that to improve our teaching we need to spend as much time thinking about our emotional reaction to feedback as we do thinking critically about what students mean.

When feedback is poorly collected and constructed then the whole process is a waste of everyone’s time.

In accepting students’ feedback we are handing some of our power, which we derive from several sources including our reputation as discipline experts, back to our students. This power exchange may lead to feelings of ‘powerlessness’ or anxiety. Those of us who adopt a more democratic (rather than autocratic) and student-centred (focussed on students’ concerns) approach to teaching may find accepting and interpreting student feedback easier.

When feedback is negative and we feel negative (guilt or shame) then we generally experience a realistic commitment to improvement; however there is risk that we may become discouraged and possibly even withdraw from the situation.

To improve our teaching we need to spend time thinking about our emotional reaction to feedback (whether we feel proud, guilty or superior) and why we feel this way. We also need to evaluate the overall nature of our feedback (is it mostly positive or negative?); often the best way to do this is with a close colleague.