My advice is to be as 'simple=less complex' as possible to maximize communication efficiency. The goal of education is NOT to show to others how bright you are, e.g. to impress students with unnecessary intellectual complexity.

My advice is to be as 'simple=less complex' as possible to maximize communication efficiency. The goal of education is NOT to show to others how bright you are, e.g. to impress students with unnecessary intellectual complexity.

Dear @Beats, I think that the evaluation form of  lectures should be simple, clear, direct, and short.

Dear @Marcel, @Abedallah, @Kamal, thank you for valuable inspirations and perspectives. I also agree, that form should be simple and clear. Dear @Kamal, good idea about introducing this form also to the professors from outside the team, and cooperate with them too. I instinctively feel and understand, that evaluating other professors lectures or seminars by participating in them as a visitor- observer  is delicate issue.

The problem is difficult and delicate. The usual way is to give to students forms in the class, and calculate an evaluation based on this. Is this unbiased? I do not think so! So one need more means to have a final evaluation. For example, each teacher should give a special lecture for colleagues and students.  Then one may choose at random some of the attendants and ask them to fill a questionare.. Finally the committee decides a final score based on the data available.

In order an evaluation system to work, there should be develop a special culture about this.   

Dear @Costas, Thank you for wise answer. You are right about the various techniques of evaluation and  developing special culture about all process.

Dear Beata,  here are some Questions to evaluate my lecture.  Just briefly:

As a student, did I get what I want from the lecture?

How did the lecture achieve this?

Was the amount of material covered suitable, given the abilities, experience and motivation of the students?

Were there any other better ways of organizing the material?

Were the examples appropriate?

Were visual aids clear and the right length? How could they be improved?

Were activities for students planned? What should students to gain from these activities?

Were materials provided to students complement the lecture? Will they encourage or discourage attendance and attention from students?

Was the lecture related to assessment?

Please read the link, thanks, miranda.

http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/handbook/lectures/4

Brilliant, dear @Miranda, thanks a lot :)

Dear Jose, we already have such online questionnaire assessment system, since a few years. We will surely take into account students' opinions too. The questionnaires for students online are very clear and simple. I wonder how to design a form for such visiting-observation  evaluation. I share below some example question our students are answering online at Nicolaus Copernicus University. We as scholars and teachers are given feedback. The scoring is expressed by numbers as 1-5. The best is 5. All is designed statistically.

1 How often have you attended the classes?

2 If the curriculum (teaching specific content) was available before they start?

3 Were the conditions for receiving credit given, at the beginning of the course?

4 Is the credit subject held in accordance with the principles were announced earlier?

5 Do you think what is the object's value to the field of study?

6 Does the classes created the conditions for the practical mastery of skills in a particular subject?

7 Was there a possibility of contact with the teacher on call or in some other way?

8 Were the activities carried out in a clear and understandable way?

9 Was the leading advantage of time spent on activities in an efficient manner?

10 Has running classes to students scholar behaved in a courteous and respectful manner?

11 Were the activities supported by e-learning, and if so, whether the form and level deserve a positive assessment? (descriptive)

12 Do you think / and that the exam (pass) was (about) score (s) fairly?

Now we, as committee have to add the other form concerning also effects of teaching as: knowledge aspects, skills, and social skills.

Questionnaires on teaching in my university also ask:

use of teaching aid

quality of facilities (video project, screen, mike and speaker, room acoustics)

lecture contents

text books

Evaluation should be done by graduates, current students, peers, and department head.

Personally, I would split such questionnaire into sections, which is generally better both for targeted and overall assesment. F. inst. topic "knowledge gained" could achieve high ratio although learnig tools might not (e.g. lessons carried out by experienced teacher using only chalk and talk approach.

Dear @Beata, the evaluation issue is a complicated process and deserves a hard working person like you and this thread is supporting us with valuable opinions from high qualified academics.

My experience tells that  high and low scores do not mean a good and a bad professor; since the answers to the same question under the same conditions could vary.

Example: Two professors did distribute the syllabus to the students; question to the students: Did the professor distribute the syllabus? the answer should be 100% yes for both; you will find that the reality is different. Neither will get 100% and one might get less than 60%.

Evaluation forms of this type might include the questions, "How often did you attend the course (or lecture)? If you did not attend, what was the cause?" Also, "What grade do you expect to receive in this course?" or else, "What grade did you receive?" As ridiculous as it sounds, student evaluation questionnaires are often distributed to students who never attended.  Also, the expected grade often affects the tenor of the evaluation: a higher evaluation tends to go with a high expected or received grade, and a lower evaluation with a lower grade. A valuable question about content could be: Do you expect to use the information received in this course in the future, and to what degree?

Dear Beata, is this a  peer evaluation of teaching ( a colleague evaluating a colleague?)  We have been having similar conversations. I think a survery or evaluation criteria depend upon a bit on the purpose of the evaluation. Is it meant to be  formative or summative for instance? Will the evaluation be used as part of annual reviews for salary and promotion or are these evaluations for faculty who wish to do a self study of their teaching? We have been trying to deveolop some criteria for peer review of teaching as one of several different alternatives faculty could use to examine their teaching as an alternative to student evaluations of teaching. In our case, the peer is selected by the faculty member and they together decide on criteria based upon the faculty members concerns. The peer is not there to write an evaluation as such (this is different from our mandatory evaluation of teaching for promotion). The peer supports and is a sounding board. The faculty member writers a self reflection based upon this dialogue and observations. 

The reason we ended up with this more dialogic format is  because we wanted a non threatening process that would encourage faculty to constantly renew their commitment to teaching. We also felt an evaluative model could erode collegial bonds over time. The downside of this model, of course, is that it's usually the faculty who are already good teachers who seek out  this kind of peer review, faculty who are clueless about their poor teaching are not likely to be very reflective about how they might improve, and there's no "teeth" to the process, that is, there's no way to really pressure faculty to make adjustments when their teaching is really not effective.

I would like to go beyond the meaning of this question. We know that exist various parameters of evaluation of the quality of a system and that the questionnaires are fundamental for this purpose. However, I would like to know what happens when you know the outcome of the evaluation. You make it public? You invite a teacher with a score down to improve performance? I would like to recount a paradoxical episode happened about 20 years ago. My University prepared a questionnaire to be administered to students about the quality of education provided by the various teachers. I was a teacher at the novice, but I got a score much higher than that of many full professors. Following on the success I have not taught for two years!!

Dear @Nelson I like your good remarks and surely wil pay attention on issues you have indocated.

Dear @Ierardi, what a story ! Good question about making public reports or not ? or how to do it properly ? Thank you very much for sharing the experiences and dilemmas.

Dear @Antoinette,thank you for contribution and ideas. I appreciate it. You are right it is kind of peer review.

Dear Beata:

Evaluations should be made by current students and program heads, as well as a self-evaluation. Former students should not comment because the evaluation should cover a specific period, in my opinion.

A reactive where free comments may be included can provide useful qualitative input from each of these three groups.

Don't forget to include standard deviation (SD) values in the final report. Many institutions omit this, and erroneous decisions are made based on a naive trust of ambiguous quantitative results. A high SD means that individual evaluations are spread over a wide range, and these results can be interpreted differently. Consider the case of a professor with an average score from students (for example, from 4 to 7 on a scale of 1 to 10). He/she may be: (1) an excellent professor who is being targeted by lazy students who don't like to have to do quality work, while being appreciated by motivated students who are learning useful concepts and skills; (2) he/she may be a poor professor who is being rewarded by lazy students because they didn't have to do much work to pass the class, while being downgraded by the motivated students; or (3) he/she may be genuinely mediocre in the opinion of the majority and need to take steps to improve his/her performance. If the SD value is low, then the third interpretation is probably correct. If the SD is high, we have to look at other evidence to determine whether the first, the second or some other interpretation applies; in this case the qualitative data from the open reactive may be useful.

For an overview of SD, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

If a peer review system is used, alone or combined with evaluations by students, program heads, and self-evaluations, the reviewers should be from other institutions to avoid conflicts of interest, partial reviews -both positive and negative-, etc. Otherwise some ugly situations could arise, since professors are human and, in a broader sense, primates, in spite of their academic credentials!

Dear @David, I appreciate your both answers. Thank you for highlighting the dilemmas.

Dear David,

The world is small. Everybody knows everybody...

Cheers 

That's very true, Marcel. It's also a good argument against using peer review to evaluate the teaching of university classes, in my humble opinion.

Dear Beata

I would like that five of the following indicators may be included depending upon one's preferences:

--Course Objectives and contents

--Subject Knowledge of the instructor

-- Knowledge-creation methodology & course Delivery

--Ability of the instructor to inspire & inculcate values

--Quality & usefulness of Book/ Material recommended

--Knowledge & competencies gained from the course

--Availability of the instructor outside the class

--Quality of assessment & evaluation

Dear @David, thank you again for opinions. What will decide young vice dean, about peer reviews nobody knows. I noticed, that as opposed to me, she is fan of idea of such evaluation. I suppose we will have lot of internal discussions in the committee. I have idea, that such peer review should be in the gesture of the heads of particular departments in the institutes or chairs at the faculties.

Dear @Debi, thank you very much for valuable key aspects of evaluation categories. I'll surely take them into account.

Dear Beata:

If peer review is insisted on, perhaps a compromise solution would be to insist on diluting its impact by giving it equal weight with evaluations by students, program heads, and the teacher him or herself. Such a system would lessen the overall impact if any one of these evaluations were to be distorted by personal animosities or other non-academic factors.

Dear David, I agree, good idea. Thank you very much.

You are welcome, Beata. I hope your committee can agree on an optimal solution. Evaluations, while peripheral to the core tasks of research, teaching, and diffusion, are a very important part of our institutional realitiies.

Beata;

I am currently teaching a Master's level course in Testing and Evaluation for Nursing Education.  The principles of evaluating faculty should be the same whatever the area of study.  You might want to review the text we use for this course.  It is basic and would provide a good framework and starting point for your efforts.  "Evaluation and Testing in Nursing Education, 4th Edition; Marilyn H. Oermann, Kathleen B. Gaberson".  I'm sure there are others that may be generic or even specific to your field.  Good Luck!

Thank you dear @Gayle, I appreciate your support a lot.

To me, it is important to understand the objectives of your evaluation? What are the final outcomes to be used for your evaluation? What is the use of the results of the evaluation?

Dear @Shafig, thank you good point

Dear @Vicheanon, such evaluation is proceeded on many European universities who have such bodies as Committees for Evaluation Quality in Education. The main purpose is to increase quality of teaching and its effects. As you probably read, in many respected answers above, there are many problematic issues and even traps within evaluation process.

Another dimension of evaluation is concerned with functions, as using it as a tool while employment issues. The final outcomes of it at my faculty (based on anonymus online student's questionnaries) were taken for about 5 years into account, while for ex. employment process and renewing contracts after winning the competition for employment. Since today results were not officially published, however we have constant online access to our individual evaluation scores. Besides, we, as scholars and teachers are also officially evaluated at the faculty, every other year.

Now we try to design such peer review form for evaluation teaching process and its various effects. Many discussion especially about peer evaluation is before our team. Many traps were emphasized in comments here.

I think it is really important to learn/ ask about what was the most useful information - experience they go from your session. When we evaluate we tend to forget that it is about what kinds of learning happened in your session. Of course it is critical to ask how you did and how can you do better but it is also important for us, as presenter/teacher/lecturer/facilitator, to learn more about what the audience gained as a result. Hope this is clear and if not please let me know.

Hi All.

In terms of a broader goal of understanding the student experience in order to improve University Education there is some research that can be useful as well. Elements of the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) of Biggs, http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/pdf/ex_2factor_spq.pdf as well as the Course Experience Questionnaire, which is widely used in Australia, http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/research/policy_dev/docs/ceq.pdf seem the most relevant.

If you are interested in overall assessment of student satisfaction and consider education to be a service you might like to also consider the HEdPERF instrument, or some elements of it. http://werken.ubiobio.cl/html/documentos/articulos_bibliografia_calidad_educacion_superior/calidad_servicio_educacion_superior/csedsup_3.pdf

Hi Beata,

Arnold's suggestions of the SPQ and CEQ are excellent. These instruments have been widely used to evaluate the quality of degree programs and courses for quality assurance and in research on teaching and learning in higher education.

These questionnaires are especially helpful in that they are based on an explicit definition of educational quality -  whether the course conditions foster students' understanding and ability to use the material they are learning (otherwise described as 'deep' learning). Does your institution, and the Committee, have a clear description of 'quality' that you can refer to as you review categories and items for your evaluations?

You and your Committee might also be interested in the following report:

Rethinking faculty evaluation: AERA Report and Recommendations on Evaluating Education Research, Scholarship, and Teaching in Postsecondary Education: 

http://www.aera.net/Portals/38/docs/Education_Research_and_Research_Policy/RethinkingFacultyEval_R4.pdf

I think the general approach and recommendations are excellent and would serve your faculty and institution well.

Dear @Arnold, @Emil, @Rosamund thank you for valuable sources and support. I appreciate your comments. Thank you.

I also suggest on preparing a simple and easy to understand form with least typing requirement .

I'm quite new at seeking evaluation, but my most recent effort was very basic: What did you like? What did you dislike? What would you like more of?

Dear @Asmat and @Karen, I agree with your suggestions. Thank you.

Hello. I agree with previous coments; first we have to velar our teaching golas to evaluate. I have some experience using one instrument to evaluate some teacing experiences but related to increase student participation costructing learning. It has good realibility and was constructed by my professor of Medical education. It is publised in my late paper here in Research gate some weeks ago. It is the second instrument altough is written in Spanish. I hope it cold be useful.

Thank you dear @Hector for suggestion and support.

Hi, I attach the instrument we use to evaluate the effects of docent activities, focused specilly in promotin a particpative education. The reliability obtained was Alfa 0.75. It is writeen in Spanish. The reference is at the bottom. 

I started reading your discussion just today. There has been many valuable inputs and for my opinion it would be very important that the questionnaire for the peers matches the questionnaire for the students. Both will benefit a lot from a wider theoretical frame. Teaching goal developmental goals, whatever. This may lead to a reformulated questionnaire for students of an additional focus group. This focus group can discuss the qualitative aspect of the participatory process, its strengths and weaknesses.

To Einstein,"We can evaluate a human competency according to the results of his/her activity in accordance with those criteria, which define their success or unsuccess" Self-assessment (to methodists from Holland): 1. What do I want? 2.What will I do? 3.What do I think about? 4.What do I feel? 5.What do my students want? 6.What will they do? 7.What will they think about? 8.What will they feel?To me, it's very important to introduce knowledge in the circle of their personality.What will they say about us in some years? Will their knowledge be useful for their life and work? Will they remember our names, our creative and scientific collective work, our examples of experience? 

Beata, many universities have these survey forms, so there is no shortage of examples to copy from if you so desired. However, it would be wise to revisit your purpose. What are you trying to achieve with your students, why and how? Have this conversation with both staff (faculty) and students. Distill from those discussions the smallest number of questions/statements that seek to identify whether the teaching has contributed effectively to your purpose. There will likely be some what questions and some how questions. Some key issues are the design of the course, the presentation (teaching and facilities), the learning activities, the relevance of the assessment tasks, timeliness of feedback, accessibility of technology, labs, etc. Then, don't forget to ask the students whether they worked hard during the course. Good luck!

Roger Hadgraft You've hit on an important point.  It's easy to have a standardized survey at the end of a course that asks the same questions in the same manner for each course taken.  To get meaningful answers we need to determine what we want to learn from the survey and structure it accordingly.  This is much the same approach we use in our formal research proposals.  Aren't these post course evaluation forms research also?

Thanks Gayle. Yes, these are research activities and it is a pity that we do not take them more seriously. Universities accumulate a lot of data and hardly analyse it at all apart from a few means and SDs. Certainly where different educational models are being introduced, e.g. blended learning, flipped classroom, PBL, the questions need to be though through carefully.

Dear @Roger,

I suppose there is no shortages and I had not intention to copy anything,  That, was surely not my idea. Have you experienced perhaps such behavior in your near environment so such idea came to your mind ? - This is just simple remark as rhetorical question and you do not need to answer. Thank you for entire contribution.

Dear @Gail, Thank you for your remarks, I agree with you,  that such evaluation is a research indeed. 

I see that presenters should be evaluated on the following points:

- Does the prsenter outline the content and set out the learning objectives clearly of his presentation?

- Is the delivery effective and clear? 

- Does the presenter motivate the participants to learn and explain the usefulness of the teaching session?

- Does the presenter keep to time?

etc...

It may be helpful to start with the objectives of the lecture/seminar and the desired characteristics of what your organisation considers to be a good presenter/facilitator.  As evaluation points, itemise 

a) each objective 

b) the qualities of a good presenter/facilitator

Use checkboxes or a Likert Scale to gather the data.