Evaluation

Whatever your professional discipline, you are likely to encounter a basic planning scheme something like the diagram below:

The details vary, but the principles are constant; and for our purposes the most important stage is how Evaluation feeds into future Planning; how prior experience changes our next efforts.

There are of course clear parallels with the experiential learning cycle. But here, the emphasis is not so much on your own learning (important though that may be) as on the practical impact when you repeat the course or module. And that, of course, is the basis of Action Research.

How I learned to stop worrying and love evaluation

"Evaluation" and "assessment" are two terms which overlap and are sometimes used interchangeably. For present purposes, "assessment" is confined to student learning and "evaluation" to course design and teaching. Obviously each informs the other. Note that US usage often refers to "evaluation" where the UK would use "assessment".

Evaluation is the key to the improvement of teaching: if you do not review what you have done and achieved, how can you know how to improve it? Evaluation is to teaching as assessment is to learning.

I used to dislike it almost as much as students (still) hate being assessed! That is rather too sweeping. What I really disliked was/is spuriously absolutist evaluation which is about judgement rather than information for development (summative rather than formative). I used to "take it personally", particularly when student evaluations implicitly—and sometimes explicitly—compared me adversely with my colleagues. One effect of this personalised reaction is to inhibit you from comparing feedback with your colleagues. (Even when I got good evaluations for my "party pieces" I treasured them but was not prepared to share them.) It was team teaching which overcame that problem, when we naturally shared the evaluation material; and discovered how useful it was to exchange ideas beyond the usual superficial, "Oh, it went OK, I think."

It is potentially painful and even humiliating, and in an era of often oppressive "quality assurance" can be a source of considerable stress. The evidence of student evaluations is often taken out of context and used quite inappropriately by distrustful management, to the extent that many teachers (myself included on occasion, if I am honest) fudge it. Nevertheless, it does pay off, so steel yourself and let's get on with it.

It is effective only if it is undertaken with due regard for context and task. Evaluation of teaching for management purposes, intended to contribute to the QA audit trail, tends to rely on standardised and usually quantitative questionnaire and form-based methods, which are often worse than useless for teaching development purposes ("worse than useless" because when students are involved, questionnaire fatigue often sets in early, and you can easily use up your goodwill on required forms well before you reach the useful, customised stuff).

Evaluation is not simply a matter of students filling in forms, though: there are many other possibilities, some of which will be explored on the linked pages.

It is more of a frame of mind than a set-piece activity. Indeed, the end-of-course or -module evaluation may be one of the least useful or informative methods, just as on-going formative assessment of student work is often more valuable than summative grade-awarding procedures.