Evaluations are tricky. I do not know which question scheme you are using at your university but to identify strengths and weaknesses from an evaluation you have to connect some data which might not be obvious in the first place. I have reworked a course once by student's evaluation and written a paper about it but it is in blind review process right now. If it is accepted (or you promise me now to keep a copy in secret ;-) ), I will be able to send you one.

Basically my experiences with student's evaluations are quite good. I was able to "fix" an international course in optical engineering based on investigating the evaluation and the free comments. I started with the audience investigation, continued with the statistics and if they are fitting to each other. If two similar questions are leading to different conclusions, I tried to find common sense. It is a bit like juggling. Too much to the left will make you slip, to the right as well. In the end we fixed the structure and improved the style of our presentation and that made a huge impact.

But here are my tips on your specific case: First I like to say that you cannot uphold for the expectations of every student. That has to be clear. To evaluate furthermore, one has to ask what the audience is. It seems like there are (at least) two main blocks of your students having the exact opposite opinion. So how heterogenous is your audience? If there are indeed two different fields of studies joining your course, you will have to match different teaching techniques to suit the so called "signature pedagogics" of their discipline. Ask the students of the different study fields what they are used to. Give them then options which might suite them better. But in the end you have to feel comfortable with it, otherwise the quality will get lower anyways.

thank you for sharing your ideas. I see the challenge and I understand that evaluations can create room for change, and, hopefully, improvement. I would appreciate any additional Information and I can keep secrets, too.

Based on my experience in the U.S. student evaluations of faculty are instruments of control and oppression--and even censorship. In American culture, "the customer is always right" and this holds true for student evaluations. Students are paying customers, and it is not uncommon for departmental chairpersons to give credence to what the students say over what they see with their own eyes.

For instance, I reviewed my syllabus and lesson plans with my chairperson at least once a month. I even asked her for advice from time to time. She was well aware that my planning was aimed at increasing the standards in one of the 'gateway' courses in accordance with the recently published standards in the discipline (teacher education). Nonetheless, when my students wrote on the evaluation form that I was "unprepared for class" (probably because I adjusted my agenda to what the students had and had not read the week before), my chairperson quoted the student evaluations. In the end, I was denied tenure because of what the students said.

This does not mean, however, that student evaluations do not include useful data. Like so much data and information in this world, it all comes down to how it is interpreted and the agenda of the interpreter.

Student evaluations are a really important idea and the student voice should be heard. But there needs to be some balance in how such evaluations are used/applied. We can't expect there to be some clear logical cohesion to these responses and outliers are quite common - but that is the nature of group-based education. I suggest that student evaluations are used as part of a portfolio of development. You should balance these against personal reflection, peer feedback, yearly review, research publications and ad hoc feedback (through email and chats in the corridor). There is a great field of literature that shows the overall reliability of student evaluations and a few t-tests alongside some Pearson correlation will help you see what is valid and extraneous. Then used the data alongside other indicators to form a more holistic picture. The worst thing you can do is ignore feedback and think you know best.

The usefulness of student evaluations is severely limited without indicating the standard deviation on each item (my university doesn't include it). Without it, if we see a mid-range number, we don't know if the group was split between a high rating and a low one, or if the group agreed on a middle rating.

I wonder how the evaluation is structured - what sort of questions are you asking the students to use in order to frame their response?

If the evaluation is a management /organisational tool then you may want to review, revise the approach so as to help you to find how to use the data in planning, preparation as well as delivery.

If it is a learning and teaching tool and I am not sure that you can have m/o and L/t tool collectively then the questions need to also require learners to reflect on what they want/ can do in order to be engaged.

Just putting it out there

If the goal is to improve one's teaching, then collecting qualitative data from students and critical peers is important or, put differently, quantitative data from a student survey is not often all that helpful on its own except for establishing general trends. In addition, institutional teaching evaluation tools, which are often utilised for accountability purposes, may not be sufficiently flexible to provide you with good data, thus I would suggest asking your students 3 or 4 questions and letting then know you would greatly value their carefully considered opinions. There is a fast-growing research literature on this issue but some of the best advice has been around for some time. For many years I have used the analytical framework outlined in Stephen Brookfield's excellent book 'Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher' (San Francisco CA, Jossey-Bass,1995). Brookfield explained that we can reflect on our teaching more critically, deeply and objectively by collecting quality data from four sources: our students, our peers, relevant research & professional literature, and our own reflection. I have successfully used Brookfield's framework to improve my university teaching and to informing the methodology of a collaborative self-study research project.

Well, evaluation may be misleading but this should not stop one from abandoning it. Teaching without evaluation is like driving a car without a steering wheel. Evaluation helps the teacher to drive his/her teaching in the right direction.

In your case, when you get misleading results, then percentages are not a good way of helping you decide which view to follow. In such case, it is better to analyze statistically and see if the difference in the views is significant or not. I mean you can use a t test of F test to check if the difference was by chance or it actually exist in the population sample.

I was told that no matter what you do as a teacher, approximately 5% of your students will love you and the class, and 5% will hate the experience. You should not worry about the "loudest" voices, but rather should look for what the common experience was for students in the class. Look for overarching trends. A few negative comments are not sufficient to justify major changes.

I generally find that formative evaluation is more helpful than end-of-semester summative evaluation. Give students several opportunities over the semester to provide feedback, and demonstrate that you are making adjustments based on the information you are receiving. You aren't really a reflective teacher if you are not using both formal and informal assessment of your teaching to adjust what you are doing in the classroom.

Finally, I agree with Tony that you should try to triangulate as much as possible by using multiple sources of information. If you department or university does not allow you to submit multiple form of evidence supporting your teaching effectiveness, well, then that is unfortunate and violates best education practices.

I think that the challenge is often what function is the evaluation as was suggested earlier. May be the trigger is also to see how as a teacher you can use this to reflect on your own teaching practice. In HE the barrier between student and lecturer is often one which students can feel in a negative way which they then use to formulate a view about practice.

Using statistical measures to review practice can be useful but there needs to be a cautionary eye on the responder, how do they perceive the evaluation process?

In relation to responding to student feedback - perhaps it is useful to keep in mind the verse from Kipling "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster - And treat those two impostors just the same" . In other words, students are not always best placed to make decisions about quality teaching. I would recommend that rather than relying on quantitative measures of performance (which have shortcomings in terms of both validity and reliability), it may be better to rely on student feedback (oral, written), reflection on one's teaching and also feedback from peers.

I teach a cours entitled "Teaching and Learning in Physical Therapy Practice". We discuss topics such as learning styles, reflective practice, developing effective presentations, formative and summative evaluations and the like. After my unit on learning styles I have students complete a formative assessment on the course. I ask questions such as "What most helped your learning?" and "What least helped your learning?" "What would you like the instructor to do more?" "What would you like the instructor to do less?" I LOVE the results I get! I collate all the results verbatim and inevitably there are some strategies that some find helpful while others do not; some strategies students want more of and the same strategies some want less! I then feed the collective results of this formative assessment back to the entire class. This reinforces the fact that students from multiple learning styles exist in every classroom and what is most helpful to some may not be helpful to others; however collectively every student's need are met at some point by the different strategies i use in the classroom. It helps students realize what works for them may not work for others and vice versa. So, to be effective we as faculty must meet the needs of ALL students; this will satisfy all of the students SOME of the time, but NOT every student ALL of the time!

Good for you for asking for a formative assessment from your students! They are lucky to have a professor that cares as much as you!

Nice question Margarete!

Assuming that the evaluation questionnaire has been developed by professionals and reviewed by peers, the interpretation of student evaluation of classes has to be handled with care!

For the instructor, scores and comments have to be taken in a constructive manner in order to improve performance.

For the administration, they should read between the lines while trying to identify trends before any judgment is made.

Margarete Imhof: This unfortunately is a problem with large classes. Also many a times in such situations I would like to be careful with some of those comments because it depends upon the seriousness of the students. For example the number of classes he/she actually attended and followed the process systematically will make a difference. Fortunately for me majority of my classes are with small number of students that makes the process relatively easy to use.

I agree, one should not expect coherence; rather, diversity based on class makeup. As an instructor I have found that each cohort of students I teach has its own "aura", some love small group discussion, others large group discussions, some more lecture and others more activities. The value of formative core evaluations is you get a general sense of the differences between cohorts. Formative assessments truly help me refine my teaching to meet the needs of the specific cohort. On the other hand, I also love when I get mixed feedback - which is more often than not! I enjoy feeding this BACK to the students. It helps them understand that just because they prefer to learn one way, others in the class may prefer to learn differently. For example, when I do a formative assessment in my class, inevitably some students love the brainstorming sessions while this makes other students crazy and they much prefer to select one strategy and just move on! The other major benefit of gathering, collating, synthesizing, and disseminating feedback to students is that you gain favor because they realize you actually read it and are considering their perspectives.

My personal feeling is that,

"How they accept me as a Teacher?",

"How much have they can understand my communication to them?"

Student evaluation is a good way of understanding their feedback. But in some cases, their answers maybe are affected by their total attitude about teacher rather than the phenomenon itself. Therefore, in these conditions I think we should review and consider again the answers and maybe find a good answer ourselves.

For example we could look the phenomenon from first to end to find the correct answer and understand which answers could be real and which ones were affected by other factors.

Dear Margarete,

I believe in student evaluation. If students take it seriously, their feedback should be considered for the purpose of the quality of teaching. However, students in some culture, and depending on their education development, can’t see the significance of the evaluation as well as some instructors. If evaluation objectives have an effect for promotion, a clear system should govern the whole setting.

While some students do not take these evaluations seriously the majority does. You can always find good feedback in them. Most universities have systems to obtain student evaluations. I believe that instructors should develop their own assessment tools to obtain feedback from students.

Hello,

please be advised to read my (finally) published article.

I am grateful for further input, as well.

Article Revision of an Optical Engineering Lecture Based on Students...

Evaluations play a critical role for faculty, they are used in faculty annual reviews and decisions about faculty renewal, promotion, and tenure. They also inform academic units in their decision-making processes for rehiring adjunct faculty members.

http://ctfe.gmu.edu/teaching/evaluating-your-course-success/

What can we learn from end-of-course evaluations?

You will find the answer in the following link

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/can-learn-end-course-evaluations/

Best Regards Margarete Imhof

Taking into account the individual differences of students during the evaluation

The student evaluations are an indication of their level of achievement, and can point towards areas of improvements.

From students evaluation of our class its possible to know that what the students learned.

If the students are week in some areas why they are week.

Students evaluation also help to adopt the strategies will help the students to learn.

Its give a direction about the achievement and understanding of the students in a course.

I think evaluations can show where I am on target and where I missed.

It gives me an honest picture of my performance and helps me develop my business.

I agree with Steven Venette .

My students are my audiance. They will help me in their evaluations deliver the information in a better manner . My tone

My students are my audiance. They will help me in their evaluations deliver the information in a better manner . My tone of voice , my writings my board dkills and so on

Dear Dr. Margarete Imhof ,

I believe that students' evaluation of my performance in the class reflects a mirror of what I do during my teaching of the courses, and not only a reflection of the academic aspect, but also a reflection of my academic, ethical and social performance. Some teachers view this process as insulting him for the student to evaluate it, but on the contrary, in my view, I see it as a true measure of the teacher’s success, but only if it is not the only criterion.

Feedback from student evaluations may have some constructive critique identifying areas of possible improvements. Teachers need to consider such input and devise an appropriate action plan.