How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?
After reading the article this week, I learned that course evaluation is an important part of course management. It is related to the improvement of teaching quality as well as the reform of the curriculum.
I personally think that teaching evaluation should be multi-dimensional. However, in the actual evaluation, we are prone to problems such as single evaluation object, single evaluation subject, or over-quantitative evaluation target, etc.To achieve a comprehensive evaluation, we should make the process include the objectives of the teaching goals and tasks as much as possible. But this doesn't mean we have to pay attention to all the issues. On the contrary, we should be able to distinguish which are the most important issues. In addition, we should grasp the main contradictions and evaluate them from the dominant factors that determine the quality of teaching.In the process of teaching evaluation, we must make the evaluation criteria，method and attitude objective. Only in this way can accurately reflect the quality of teachers' teaching and the academic level of students, and this will provide a basis for guiding the improvement of teaching work.
I think that teaching evaluation directly determines the quality of teaching to some extent. From an international perspective, teaching evaluation is an effective means of guaranteeing the quality of higher education in many countries around the world. Some developed countries have a history of several decades or even hundreds of years in higher education evaluation and emphasis on it increasingly. I think this is what Chinese education should improve.
In general, the evaluation of teaching is quite significant. For schools, the particular evaluation means the ranking and the reputation of the school, and more importantly, the state's funding will also be affected by the evaluation. For students, it means a good education and learning environment, so the evaluation has a close interest to us!
And my question is: What do you think are the effective ways to evaluate teaching? As a teacher, how do you usually evaluate your teaching?
I personally think that teaching evaluation should be multi-dimensional. However, in the actual evaluation, we are prone to problems such as single evaluation object, single evaluation subject, or over-quantitative evaluation target, etc.To achieve a comprehensive evaluation, we should make the process include the objectives of the teaching goals and tasks as much as possible. But this doesn't mean we have to pay attention to all the issues. On the contrary, we should be able to distinguish which are the most important issues. In addition, we should grasp the main contradictions and evaluate them from the dominant factors that determine the quality of teaching.In the process of teaching evaluation, we must make the evaluation criteria，method and attitude objective. Only in this way can accurately reflect the quality of teachers' teaching and the academic level of students, and this will provide a basis for guiding the improvement of teaching work.
I think that teaching evaluation directly determines the quality of teaching to some extent. From an international perspective, teaching evaluation is an effective means of guaranteeing the quality of higher education in many countries around the world. Some developed countries have a history of several decades or even hundreds of years in higher education evaluation and emphasis on it increasingly. I think this is what Chinese education should improve.
In general, the evaluation of teaching is quite significant. For schools, the particular evaluation means the ranking and the reputation of the school, and more importantly, the state's funding will also be affected by the evaluation. For students, it means a good education and learning environment, so the evaluation has a close interest to us!
And my question is: What do you think are the effective ways to evaluate teaching? As a teacher, how do you usually evaluate your teaching?
Thank you for sharing! I totally agree with you that Chinese education should attach more importance to teaching evaluation in higher education. I think it is significant to provide chances for students to evaluate every course taught and provide feedback to instructors. For example, rating the instructor's overall teaching effectiveness, rating the overall quality of the course, how much students have learned in this course, and whether the instructor promotes an atmosphere conductive to work and learning, etc.
ReplyDeleteHi, Wangeng，I agree with you that teaching evaluation should be multi-dimensional, and multi-form as well, I think, because one student may be good at some forms of evaluation but did badly at the others. For example, some students achieve a good score in the paper test while fail to oral text because he is not a person who can express himself very well. On the other hand, I consider the judgment of an “evaluation” should be grounded on the teaching objective. If you are going to evaluate the writing ability, the student in question is succeed while he doesn’t fit the requirement of speaking test.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post! You've posed some excellent questions.
ReplyDeleteAt my school, we're evaluated differently at different stages in our teaching careers. Early on, evaluations are tied to tenure and include a supervisor observation and evaluation, review of end-of-semester student evaluations, a self-evaluation, and progress through a new faculty orientation program. Then, post-tenure, there's a 3-year review process that's pretty flimsy. It's really up to individual instructors about how they're evaluating their own teaching.
Something we've toyed around with doing is a peer evaluation, and after taking an organizational theory class here at UIC last semester, I realized that peer evaluations--or at least peer observations--could be a great tool for both improving teaching as well as for de-privatizing teaching. We are frequently so isolated in our classrooms and it would be a huge benefit to see each other, learn from each other, and foster conversations about pedagogy, curriculum, and student learning.
Thank you for sharing Wangeng! To answer you question - I think some effective ways to evaluate whether or not students learned the information taught in the course would be through practical projects that can test to see a whether they can retain and reapply knowledge to different concepts, and/or opened ended surveys to see what students found effective/ineffective within the course. I agree with what Sydnie said above that teachers should be able to evaluate their own curriculum - taking note of what they want to accomplish with the curriculum at the beginning a the course, and reflecting back if they meet those objectives at the end of the course.
ReplyDeleteHi, Wangeng, thank you for your sharing. I think I can use a variety of methods to evaluate my teaching strategies will give a better feedback about how to improve my teaching and the course. In addition, students will appreciate the effort teacher take to include their ideas in the teaching process and to individualize the classroom approach to a particular group of students. For example, write the goals for the class period on the board at the start of class. This will help me and my students know what to expect and may help me keep the timing of events under control. I can also ask for feedback from my colleagues. Ask colleagues if I can sit in on their classes to get ideas about how to improve my own teaching effectiveness.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing. I think the education involves not only teachers and students, also the administrators and parents, thus, the evaluation of teaching process should also consider the perspectives of administrators and parents. In addition, as for the specific ways of evaluation, I think classroom observation and assessment of students performance and teachers' self-reflection are effective to evaluate the curriculum. Also, in terms of assessing students performance, in addition to the paper test, the questionnaire for self-evaluation and the interview of peer assessment can be applied as well.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for sharing. Teaching evaluation is really very meaningful. As for how to carry out effective teaching evaluation, I think that teaching evaluation should not only focus on the results, but also on the teachers'classroom performance and the lively forms on the surface of the classroom. In this evaluation system, teachers are the leading role and actors, while students become supporting roles and audiences. Our evaluation must be authentic and effective, and should be based on students. Teaching evaluation should abandon or dilute the evaluation indicators. In order to achieve effective teaching evaluation we should abandon or dilute the evaluation indicators in the evaluation process. "The real difficulty in implementing any reform is not to develop new ideas, but to eliminate inappropriate elements from the old world of ideas." Therefore, in order to pursue effective evaluation, we must weed out the inappropriate components and abandon or dilute the evaluation indicators. Teaching evaluation should be carried out in a solid and effective school-based way. In the process of evaluation, we should take "self-evaluation" as the foothold and adopt such evaluation methods as: instructor teaching - instructor lecturing - lecturer commenting - instructor talking about improvement - lecturer talking about their own gains. Such a process of evaluation is solid and effective, the instructor has a harvest, and the teachers who attend the class have a harvest.
ReplyDeleteIn a word, whether students are "effective" depends on whether they are "effective" in teachers. Real classroom is the foundation and process; effective evaluation is the purpose and the result. Such an evaluation will promote teachers to have not only advanced ideas, but also advanced actions.