What_Is_a_Well-Designed_Evaluation_Form_

What is a well-designed evaluation form' The ***** University-wide teaching evaluation form are designed for every teacher and TA and taken by each student anonymously. There are three parts for the teaching evaluation form. Sections A asks for numerical rating for instructor and course with 12 items; Section B asks for the students’ basic information, including class standing, average effort each week, major, main reason for taking the course, etc; the last part asks for the comments about the instructor and the course, which are open-ended. It includes both quantitative and narrative items. For section A, I think it effectively addresses nine key aspects that distinguish effective from ineffective teaching (TfT Ch60), or four most important factors of skill, rapport, structure, and difficulty (TE Ch16). The 12 items include “Instructor’s ability to present material clearly”, “Instructor’s preparation for classes”, “Instructor’s overall organization of the course”, “Instructor’s enthusiasm for teaching”, “Usefulness of assignments in achieving the goals of the course”, “Quality of the instructor’s comments on your written work”, “Instructor’s helpfulness outside of class”, “Instructor’s respect for student’s viewpoint”, “Instructor’s success in setting and maintaining high standards for student’s work”, “Contribution of this course to your acquiring new knowledge”, “Contribution of this course to increasing your capacity to think critically and formulate questions”, “Overall effectiveness of the instructor”. On the reverse side there are two global questions about teaching effectiveness: your overall assessment of the instructor, your overall assessment of this course. This information is useful for instructor’s improvement. The items are very clear, not ambiguous, or confounding two different issues. It is short, perfect within the range of ten or twelve specific items recommended that gives a small number of question focused on an instructor’s overall teaching and on student learning. Besides these good points, this evaluation form doesn’t ask students to give advice to prospective students that could be used by the instructor to post on course web site for the next offering. It doesn’t ask students to suggest questions for future rating forms, either. But this doesn’t affect the overall advantages of this form. I think this evaluation form is a well-designed one. I’ve been once on the receiving end of student ratings as a lecturer. I find that the open-ended questions are generally more helpful than quantitative questions because students wrote down specific aspect they concern.