Making Sense and Use of Student Evaluations

At the end of each semester while students are busy with final assignments and exams, you are likely tying up administrative loose ends before grading picks back up. This time also gives you the opportunity to reflect on how things went. Though not the only source of information, student evaluations can help you identify what went well and what might be improved.

Student evaluations of teaching are one of the most researched aspects of higher education. Although studies have shown them to be both valid and reliable when the questions are well-conceived, recent studies have clearly demonstrated how bias can disadvantage certain instructors, especially BIPOC, women, and other minoritized faculty. This, along with the fact that response rates are sometimes low and the responses themselves extreme, produces anxiety for instructors. While evaluations are neither perfect nor a holistic measure of teaching effectiveness, there is still important information that you can glean from them. They can give you valuable insight into your course(s) to ultimately help improve your teaching—but first, you must filter out the noise.

Strategies for reading evaluations vary considerably. One strategy involves going through all the student responses in one sitting and then rereading them a week or so later, allowing you time to process the feedback and see the comments more objectively. It can be hard to overcome those few negative, and often contradictory comments—one student said they loved the course, while another hated it. Try not to focus on overly critical comments. Instead, home in on the trends; that is where opportunities for improvement can be found. When you’re ready, the CTE encourages you to ask these questions:

• What is surprising? What did you already know? What do you want to know more about?

• What are the themes that emerge across different responses? Are you able to explain the themes and identify opportunities for improvement?

• What constructive suggestions appeal to you? What could you easily change now? What are things you are willing to consider changing, but you will need more time to reflect (and eventually design the change)? What aspects of your course or teaching will you not change for good pedagogical reasons, but you will figure out how to help students better understand your choices?

If the feedback is unexpected, it can help to talk with a colleague or a trained CTE instructional consultant. For example, you may learn that students failed to see how an assignment connected to the course. Reimagining that assignment to address your students’ concerns and emphasizing its usefulness could improve future students’ satisfaction, engagement, and learning. And don’t forget that the positive comments are just as important. For instance, the feedback could affirm that a new active learning technique you implemented is beneficial for students’ learning experience or speak to aspects of your teaching that you’ve been working on.

Our Assistant Director of Engineering Education Initiatives Lynn Mandeltort recommends situating evaluations into a longer narrative about your teaching. “Yes, pay attention to when students call out specific assignments, but also look for phrases and themes in their comments that align directly with your teaching philosophy, aspects of your teaching that … you value or have been working on,” she said. “In putting together a dossier for promotion, the job market, or a teaching portfolio, an instructor can have multiple sources of evidence pointing to a common theme and to contribute to their ongoing development.”

If you want to dig a little deeper into the data, the CTE has produced resources for interpreting the quantitative and qualitative feedback: the numbers (PDF) and the written components (PDF). These documents can help determine the significance and validity of the data, as well as further identify areas for improvement.

At their best, student evaluations of teaching are simply meant to help instructors become better teachers. Getting mid-semester feedback is also another, better option to gauge how a course is going and what is helping or impeding students’ learning. This ensures there won’t be too many surprises come the end of the semester and allows you to make course adjustments midway based on student input and address any issues. Remember, the CTE is here to help you make sense and use of student feedback. Contact us for a confidential consultation.