Methods and Strategies for Evaluation of Teaching and Units
At Macquarie, we encourage you to evaluate using a range of sources of information. The information can come from your students, your own observations, your peers or mentor's observations, and your students' work. The University is currently developing policies around evaluation and some of the activities listed below may become part of a review cycle at your department. Over time, using several methods from this list will ensure that you obtain diverse but complementary perspectives on many facets of teaching and/or curriculum.
Student evaluation and feedback
Student feedback is a rich and valuable source of information for both formative and summative purposes. For this reason, student feedback and evaluation are key components of the University's Quality Enhancement Framework, as well as providing summative evidence for staff promotion, probation and awards, and for internal and external quality assurance reporting requirements. Methods of obtaining student feedback may be formal or informal, structured, semi-structured or unstructured. They include surveys, minute papers, focus groups and student consultations.
- More information about obtaining and using student feedback and evaluation, including methods, resources and related policies and procedures
- Teaching Evaluation for Development Service (TEDS)
- Order TEDS surveys (Learner Experience of Unit, Learner Experience of Teaching)
Peer observation and review
Colleagues from your own and other disciplines are often a good source of data for evaluating your teaching and units, providing professional feedback and guidance. You can find out how they perceive your teaching, how your unit prepares students for involvement in subsequent units, and any aspects of your teaching you might try to improve. Peer observation and review of teaching and/or curriculum can be undertaken for a range of purposes, both formative and summative. Approaches range from informal, semi-structured observation by, and feedback from, a friendly work colleague, to highly structured, formal schemes aimed at providing evidence for promotion and other reward processes.
Self-observation, self-assessment and critical reflection
Macquarie University encourages critically reflective practice in all areas of academic work, including teaching and curriculum development. All the feedback you can obtain from other sources is, of course, of little use unless you have a reflective and critical approach to your own practice. In addition, for summative purposes such as promotion, it's important for you to be able to demonstrate, through examples and accounts of practice, that you have reflected on, and acted constructively in response to, formative feedback and evaluation.
Student assessment tasks and attainment of learning outcomes
The assessment tasks and other work that students produce in the course of their study is a valuable source of information about your teaching and curriculum design. There are many ways to use students' work in both self- and peer-evaluation, for purposes such as developing teaching skills, refining curriculum, diagnosing problem areas and providing evidence of effective teaching.
