Evaluating your teaching
Evaluation is a means of understanding the effects of our teaching on student learning. It implies collecting information about our work, interpreting the information, and making judgements about which actions should be taken to improve practice … It should not be done to teachers but by teachers for the benefit of their professional competence and their students' understanding (Ramsden, 2003:12).
At La Trobe, there is a serious commitment to evaluating teaching and student learning. The university’s policies and systems have been developed to provide academics with information and data that is based on evidence and research on student learning. The goal is to aid academics’ professional decision-making about how best to improve curriculum, teaching and student learning, and to include students as partners in that dialogue.
Many academics are interested in collecting student feedback at an individual or subject level, and for good reason. The university provides a number of surveys for this purpose. The range of surveys on offer, the process for ordering them and the reporting, is managed by the Planning and Institutional Performance Unit (PIPU).
The university also collects course-level information about the student experience, as well as the course destinations after graduation. These are:
- The Australian Graduate Survey (AGS)
- The Graduate Destination Survey (GDS)
- Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ)
- Postgraduate Destination Survey (PGDS)
- Postgraduate Research Experience Questionnaire (PREQ)
- Australian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE)
- Beyond Graduation Survey (BGS)
Results on each of these course-level surveys for La Trobe University are available to staff from the Planning and Institutional Performance Unit (PIPU).
While student feedback is an important source of data to draw on to evaluate your teaching, it is not the only source. Your colleagues can also provide you with useful feedback as part of a peer observation of teaching process or through reviewing aspects of your curriculum. As a developmental and collegial process, the peer review of teaching has many benefits.
Collecting feedback to evaluate your teaching, subject or course is not the end of the process. It is important to consider how you intend to close the feedback loop – that is, report to students, colleagues and managers how you have used all the data you have collected to improve your teaching. Focusing your reflections and improvements on action provides you with concrete strategies to try next time around. You can access a guide to evaluating your teaching here (PDF 55KB) | (DOC 565KB).
If you are seeking assistance with planning a strategy to evaluate your course, program or subject; or would like some advice about getting started, contact the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Centre.