http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/improve-your-course-evaluations-by-having-your-class-write-letters-to-future-students/48659
Improve your Course Evaluations by having your Class Write
Letters to Future Students
April 23,
2013, 8:00 am
As we’re drawing to the close of the
spring semester, it’s a good time to not only be thinking about final
assignments and exams but to consider your final student evaluations. We’ve
talked frequently about course evaluations here at ProfHacker: Jason talked
about working with the
numerical output from evaluations; Heather made some suggestions for
what to do when
the evaluations are just plain wrong, as well as sharing reader’s
suggestions; Mark talked about the best time to
read those evaluations; Ryan discussed the lessons he
learned from his evaluations last spring and how he changed the next
iteration of his course; and I’ve previously covered how to improve student
participation on evaluations. Why spill so much (digital) ink on
evaluations, when we all know that they are an imperfect measure of what
happens in a college classroom? Well, if we’ve got to do them, we might as well
make them as useful as possible.
Last semester I tried something new
with the qualitative portion of my evaluations: I asked the students to compose
a letter to those who would take the course the next time it was offered. (EDIT:
When I was writing this post, I couldn’t recall who had given me this idea. I’m
pleased to now give credit to Patrick Williams, who suggested it).
Here’s the exact prompt: Write a short letter to future students in the class,
letting them know whatever you think is most important about the instructor,
the course, the assignments, and the reading. I had two reasons for this
new format. First, my past format for evaluations breaks everything up into
three or four questions with equal amounts of space allotted to each question.
This prompt would allow them to spend more time on the subjects that they
wanted to talk more about and vice versa. Second, I hoped the freedom of the
form would result in the students creating a bit of narrative that resulted in
them sharing more specifics about the class.
After getting the evaluations back,
I can say that the new format accomplished both of these goals. What’s more, I
found that the students wrote, on average, far more on these evaluations than
they have on past ones that I have provided. And in writing something directed
at fellow students rather than me or some faceless, unknowable bureaucracy, I’d
say that the students were much more candid. This means that they are more
direct in talking about my strengths and weaknesses. And while it’s nice to
hear the former, it’s the latter that will actually help me do a better job the
next time around. If you’re interested, you can read them for
yourself (PDF).
Overall, I’m very pleased with this
reformulation of my evaluations and have been recommending it to friends. I
know that not everyone can write their own qualitative evaluations, but would
you ask your classes to write letters to future students? Do you have a
different format you use for class evaluations? Let us know in the comments!
Lead image: Letter Box at Epworth Post
Office / David Wright
/ CC BY 2.0
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