The Why and How of Learning From Course Evaluations

The window for student course evaluations for Fall 2024 courses will close on Dec. 9. If all goes as it should, this means that student feedback should be available for your review by early January, if not before.

Student evaluations can generate feelings of anxiety, frustration and occasional joy – sometimes all at the same time. I don’t know anyone who finds the prospect of opening their course evaluation reports anything less than nerve-wracking, and for some, the sting of negative student feedback can linger far longer than students would ever expect. Honestly, we have good reason to dislike course evaluations: they more often measure student satisfaction than teaching effectiveness (Boring et. Al, 2016), and they are notoriously and stubbornly biased (Owen et. al, 2024).

In spite of all their flaws, I have spent the past two years working with faculty, students and admin to redraft and revise our current course evaluations (have your say on ECU's new course evaluation survey via this link). I believe that course evaluations that are intentionally designed to limit bias and speak more directly to student learning are a valuable, even critical, source of information about what works and what doesn’t in our teaching.

When they work as designed, course evaluation surveys should surface a breadth of student experiences, and the occasionally contradictory information they present can shed light on how we can best allocate our limited time when we are revising our courses. One single disgruntled comment can hurt, but it is only just that, one opinion. Far more valuable and important are when we see patterns or recurring themes in our feedback: if ten students report feeling confused about an assignment or activity, then that signals something we should attend to. Some instructors even go so far as to code their feedback, scanning it first for how it fits into pre-established categories rather than going in cold (Vengrin, 2022).

The other reason I think course evaluations remain important is that we just don’t have many formal processes for hearing from all our students. We often know the opinions of the vocal or more empowered students long before they fill out an evaluation survey. But the power dynamic in the classroom (and in the very tight-knit community that is ECUAD) means that other students won't feel comfortable sharing honest feedback without the protection of anonymity. We need to hear those voices if we want to make informed and inclusive choices about our curriculum.

Whatever you do with the information you receive from student course evaluations, remember that student course evaluations are just information, and not even the best or most reliable information at that. Try to take what helps and leave behind what doesn’t. And then, advocate with your Faculty Association and academic leadership for other forms of feedback on our teaching to better distribute the weight we put on these important but flawed sources of information in our hiring and promotion processes.

References

Boring, A., Ottoboni, K., & Stark, P. B. (2016). Student evaluations of teaching (mostly) do not measure teaching effectiveness. ScienceOpen, DOI: 10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-EDU.AETBZC.v1.

Dosmar, E. (2023, November 29). Course evaluations as a tool for Growth. Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/academic-leadership/course-evaluations-as-a-tool-for-growth/

Owen, A. L., De Bruin, E., & Wu, S. (2024). Can you mitigate gender bias in student evaluations of teaching? Evaluating alternative methods of soliciting feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2407927

Vengrin, C. 2022. Engaging the Fear: How to Utilize Student Evaluations, Accept Feedback, and Further Teaching Practice. In: Westfall-Rudd, D., Vengrin, C., and Elliott-Engel, J. (eds.) Teaching in the University: Learning from Graduate Students and Early-Career Faculty. Blacksburg: Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. https://doi.org/10.21061/universityteaching License: CC BY-NC 4.0.