»Interpreting Assessment Data

Looking at Your Course Evaluations

A few weeks at the end of the semester, it can be difficult to look at your course evaluations. Instead of viewing your evaluations as judgment, they can be viewed as a roadmap of growth and opportunity to continue to develop your pedagogical practice as a teacher-scholar. Here are a few suggestions we recommend when looking at your course evaluations:

• Acknowledge positive responses!  

• Consider how students have responded to new things you tried or changes you’ve made from a previous term.  

• Set aside comments that are not useful or relate to things that cannot be changed. 

• Consider common themes and how they might be applied to revising course content, delivery, activities, etc. 

Here are a few strategies that have been show to improve course evaluations:  

• Tone of voice
  • Clear, hesitation-free language, devoid of "ah" and "uhm," leads students to give higher ratings to teachers, as revealed in Haleta's 1996 study. 

• Class Organization (Murray (2007):  

• • Write key terms. 

• • Provide multiple examples. 

• • Highlight practical applications. 

• • Offer an outline. 

• • Signal topic transitions. 

• • Emphasize connections. 

• • Periodically review key topics. 

• Syllabus 

• • The syllabus informs students about the course and instructor's style, shaping their initial impression (McKeachie, 1986; DiClementi, and Handelsman, 2005; Grunert, 1997).

Improving Student Feedback on Course Evaluations

The most common practice used in Higher Education to evaluate the effectiveness of an instructor and/or course is the end-of-course evaluation. These evaluations provide students with an opportunity to let the instructor know about their experience in the class and the specific aspects of the instruction that facilitated their learning and development. Students are also asked to suggest ways the instructor could improve the course and/or the overall student learning experiences. 

The information gathered through this type of survey can either be useful and actionable or not useful and not actionable. Certainly, the quality of the individual items and overall instrument determines whether the data collected is valid and reliable. However, equally important is preparing students to provide useful and actionable feedback.

Pre-Student Course Evaluation Activity:

1. Discuss the benefits of gathering student feedback (i.e., improved instruction, course design, learning experiences, assessments, etc.).
2. Discuss the difference between feedback that is useful and actionable and feedback that is not useful and not actionable.
3. Share the following short video - undergraduate students teaching other students how to provide instructors with useful, actionable feedback. Student2Student_Useful Feedback
4. It is important to remind students that it is inappropriate to make comments that are related to protected characteristics of the instructor and are unrelated to instruction.* These comments can be removed from an end-of-course evaluation.
5. Finally, let students know that you value their feedback; however, changing or stopping some pedagogical practice may be non-negotiable because the practice is backed by educational research on teaching and learning.

*“Such comments relate to characteristics consistent with Chapman University’s Non-Discrimination Statement: basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, gender, gender expression/identity, genetic information, marital status, mental illness, military/veteran status, national and ethnic origin, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, transgender or LGBTQIA+ status, or any other characteristic protected by law.”