ABSTRACT
I should like to tell you about some of the work we are doing at the University of Southampton on evaluating and recognizing teaching: in particular, the use of a standard academic curriculum vitae and a student course evaluation questionnaire. While what I will outline appears very basic in terms of the more sophisticated academic debate on evaluating teaching, it is a practical reality and has been implemented. Before doing so, I should like to review some of the basic considerations and issues to do with evaluating teaching. I have five key points to make.
We do need to distinguish between evaluation for feedback and improvement, and evaluation for assessment. Both serve different purposes and require different approaches. However, we need both. Feedback without assessment, and thereby recognition, is likely to be perceived as teaching lacking value and status. Why should staff bother? Assessment without feedback and means of improvement is likely to be perceived as unhelpful, unfair and limited in value.
Evaluation of teaching is multi-dimensional. It includes context, inputs, processes, outcomes, content and the like. Ideally, it requires multiple sources of evidence and multiple methods of data collection, used together, to give conclusions credibility and confidence. This is more ideal than reality, but we can strive towards a comprehensive approach while bearing in mind resource implications.
Judgments about teaching performance should be based upon those factors under the control of the teacher. In other words, you have to take into account contextual features not under their control, such as timetabling and teaching room allocation.
Qualitative judgments are involved. We need informed professional judgments based upon the evidence available rather than a mechanistic formula. Teaching is an imprecise and complex activity.
Finally, evaluation procedures need to be economical of resources and time. Staff are under more and more pressure from the demands of research and increasing student numbers. We have to be realistic about what can be achieved under these circumstances.
Now I should like to outline two specific methods we have in place to evaluate and recognize teaching performance. The first is the student questionnaire. All departments are required to evaluate courses (i.e. modules) on an annual basis. Part of this process involves polling student opinion using a questionnaire. We offer departments a standard questionnaire which they can modify if they wish. The standard questionnaire can be machine read using an optical mark reader which can save considerable time in analyzing results. Alternatively, a department can devise its own questionnaire as long as it contains two compulsory questions to allow summative comparisons over courses and teachers. These are: (a) overall, how would you rate this course?; and (b) overall, how would you rate the lecturer? These two questions were chosen specifically from a review of the literature as offering reliable, global and summative measures of student satisfaction. They have little feedback value and are not meant to. Although departments are required to use a student course evaluation questionnaire, they are also expected to use other sources of evidence (for example, staff-student liaison committees, comments from tutors and lecturers, course documentation, etc.) as a basis for an evaluation report for feedback to the lecturer and department. Improvements and changes, together with follow-up action, are also expected to be incorporated in the report. These in turn would be evaluated in the following year’s course evaluation. So both improvement and judgment are built into the process of evaluation.