teaching evaluations – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

Teaching Tip: A New Way to Look at Student Evaluations

It is that time of year again–student evaluations. The comic strip Doonesbury hit on it last week in a sad sort of humorous way.

Most student evaluation forms are summative, writes Faculty Focus (Nov. 23, 2015), concentrating on teacher characteristics: “Was the teacher organized?” or “Did the teacher explain things clearly?” By the end of a semester, we have a sense of how a course went and what activities and actions supported student learning. But through some painful experiences we’ve learned that sometimes what we thought happened was contradicted by what students experienced.

Here is an alternative “course experience” evaluation approach: Begin by telling students that you’re asking questions only they can answer. Explain that this is feedback that can help you become a teacher who helps students learn more effectively. Below are some examples of sentence stems that can yield useful information.

Your insights into your learning in this course can help me see our course from your side of the desk. Please respond anonymously to any 3 of the statements below to help me plan for next semester:

In this course …

it most helped my learning of the content when…because…
it would have helped my learning of the content if…because…
the assignment that contributed the most to my learning was… because…
the kinds of homework problems that contributed most to my learning were…because…
the biggest obstacle for me in my learning the material was… because…
during the 1st class day, I remember thinking…because…
what I think I will remember five years from now is…because…

Guest Post: Custom Teaching Evaluations at Temple University

Our Guest Post today comes from Prof. Howard Weiss. Howard has developed both POM for Windows and Excel OM, which we provide free with our OM texts.

At Temple U., as at most colleges, we have long distributed course evaluations to students at the end of the semester. These evaluations include general questions about the quality of the instructor, the value of the course, the workload in the course and include opportunities for students to provide general comments. There are two glaring difficulties with these evaluations. Possibly due to Temple’s size, the results are not presented back to the faculty members until after the start of the spring semester. This makes it difficult to make adjustments in time for the spring semester based on fall results. More recently, a new difficulty has arisen. The university evaluations are performed on the web, and the response rate has dropped greatly.

For some time now, I have been giving my students my own evaluation, with questions that are much more specific than those on the university forms. I ask them about the course requirements and the weights that they think should be assigned to each requirement. I ask about the use of Excel in the classroom. I allow my students to use either POM for Windows, Excel OM, or both for homework and exams, and I ask them if I should continue to do so or require only one of the 2 packages. I ask about the value of preparing their presentations for my class, the value of actually presenting and the value of listening to classmates’ presentations.

Of course, I also ask about the use of MyOMLab in the class. Once again this fall, the students have overwhelmingly endorsed MyOMLab. 100% of students who responded to my survey agreed that MyOMLab should continue to be used for homework and quizzes. And 84% wrote that I should continue to use MyOMLab for the exams. These results are very consistent with surveys from previous years.

I like having my own survey with specific feedback and receiving the feedback in time to prepare for the next semester. Do you agree?

Teaching Tip: Considering Teaching Evaluations at the Beginning of the Semester

Over my 35+ years of college teaching, I have come to view course evaluations as a chore– one of those obligations we do at the end of each course. And the comments students dash off can be more confusing than clarifying. With the right approach, though, course evaluations can be a very constructive tool. One of the keys, according to Faculty Focus (Jan.2, 2013) is to solicit feedback throughout the course, rather than waiting until the end when it’s too late to make improvements.

Here are a few strategies to think about before the start of the Spring semester:

Ask the right questions. If you want to know if one of your primary learning outcomes is being achieved, ask. It’s the student’s perspective, but it can be a valuable piece of information.
Ask for written comments. Comments can be insightful. But keep your questions simple, like these three:
1. What is one thing you like about this course (so far)?
2. What is one thing you do not like about this course (so far)?
3. What is one thing that could be improved in this course?
Survey more than once. Perhaps 1/3 or halfway through the semester, and once more. Assess any progress you made from the comments on the first survey. Don’t wait until the department’s formal end-of-course evaluation. Your students will also appreciate your genuine interest in improving the course for them. If your course gets off track a little at the beginning, you will have time to get things back on track.
Survey only if you are prepared to deal with the feedback. If you summarize and share the results, and implement the things that are constructive, your students will feel empowered.
Tell your students what you are looking for. Let them know it’s ok to be negative, as long as the criticism is constructive and not mean-spirited.
Keep your perspective (and humor) on things. Once you get the comments, interpret them carefully, but don’t overanalyze or internalize. Ignoring extremes/outliers can provide a good overall indicator.

Guest Post: The Numbers Don’t Lie

Professor Howard Weiss at Temple University’s Fox School of Business writes about his experiences with MyOMLab. Howard, the developer of both Excel OM and POM for Windows, is also Academic Director of Temple’s EMBA program.

I just received my teaching evaluation scores from the Fall 2011 semester and once again they have improved. I have evaluations that go back to 2005, but Temple U. changed evaluation questions beginning in 2008 so I can only compare evaluations from 2008 and later. Fall of 2008 was the last year that I taught the course without MyOMLab. The two questions that we consider the most important are:

The instructor taught this course well
I learned a great deal in this course.

My average score in 2008 on the first question above was 4.15. The average during my last 3 MyOMLab years is 4.43. On the second question, I have seen a steady increase. Before using MyOMLab the average was 3.95. Since 2009, the averages have risen each year from 4.1 to 4.3 to 4.4 this past Fall. Since the only change in the course has been my adoption of MyOMLab, I have to believe that use of MyOMLab is a major reason for the increase.

On the evaluations, several students write: “ MyOMLab was very helpful” or “MyOMLab contributes to my learning”. From discussions, it is clear that they write this because MyOMLab offers instant help when doing homework problems. They appreciate the feedback they receive when they enter an incorrect answer, and also the Help Me Solve This Option, which breaks down the problem step-by-step. They value the eText option which takes them directly to the right pages in the textbook. They don’t have to carry their textbook around, nor do they have to page through the textbook to find the relevant information. Of course, when they are stuck on a problem, they like the Ask My Instructor option and my responsiveness to their questions sent to me from MyOMLab. (I appreciate that the homework problem from MyOMLab is included in the email I am sent.)

The only negative comment on the evaluations was in 2009, and was about MyOMLab having little tolerance for round off errors. This has been corrected and is no longer an issue. My hope is that MyOMLab will get even better and that my evaluation scores will also!