Evaluation of Teaching and Courses
The Policy on the Evaluation of Teaching and Courses requires all staff members to evaluate their teaching on a regular basis. In addition, course coordinators, are required to ensure that course design is evaluated in three year cycles. In the late 1990s, the development of a piece of software, known as the Evaluation Assistant, which allows individuals to design ‘custom built’ questionnaires to elicit students’ perceptions of teaching and course design, was commissioned. The custom building of questionnaires is congruent with an understanding of teaching as being ‘fit for purpose’ within individual contexts. The task of the evaluator is therefore to identify elements of his/her teaching and to test the validity of these in context. For this to happen, questionnaires cannot be standardised across contexts.
Access the Brief Guide on the Evaluation of Teaching and Courses
Evaluation Assistant
The CHERTL Evaluation Assistant is a web-based software tool that can be used to develop questionnaires to elicit students' perceptions of teaching and courses. The Evaluation Assistant allows lecturers to 'custom-build' instruments by selecting questions from a bank of questions. The program also allows users to submit their own questions for inclusion in the question bank and questionnaires.
Although evaluation reports generated by the Evaluation Assistant are confidential in that CHERTL only returns or discusses reports with the lecturer who has conducted the survey, lecturers are encouraged to close the feedback loop by discussing survey results with the respondents. Many staff members also choose to include all or part of these reports in their teaching portfolios to support claims of development or excellence. While reports on teaching evaluations are private as they are aimed at developing teaching, reports on course evaluations are public documents in the sense that Heads of Departments can legitimately request lecturers to make such reports available for programme review purposes.
For further information please contact the EA Administrator at chertl-admin@ru.ac.za or extensions 8171/3.
For information on ethical considerations when generating data from participants see the Guidelines on ethical use of student data in teaching and learning.
Last Modified: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 10:59:10 SAST