Jyotsna Vijapurkar has given a very good answer to the question. I think, on top of it, the aspect of students' ability to apply the learned knowledge into some sort of reflective/productive activities/outcome (public-speaking, forums, etc) may be regarded as evidence of successful student-centered approaches to teaching and learning.

I think to have a student centered class, each class should be followed by discussion session to discuss the relevant queries, stories, thoughts and ideas from students. Instructor should inbuilt this(discussions) time in plan. Also course outline should have some flexibility inbuilt for adjustment as per the feedback obtained from the class discussions.

I think “student-centeredness” is important and should be measured in three main areas, namely the curriculum, the teaching and student assessment.

For the course, apart from meeting academic standards, ultimately it has to be useful and applicable in the students’ post-graduate life.

Regarding teaching, students should be encouraged to take more responsibility for their learning and the academic staff is facilitators rather than didactic teachers. For this teachers have to adjust the format of teaching according to different learning styles of the students. Teachers also have to encourage and be responsive during interactions with or amongst the students.

In terms of student assessment, obviously it has to be in an appropriate format that tests the students’ learning needs, be it theoretical knowledge or practical skills and if they can integrate the two.

Measuring the above attributes can be tricky though and one can design various metrics depending on the local situation. Student feedback or evaluation of the courses and teachers would be a good starter and is frequently used; while a post-graduate follow-up on the actual usefulness of the course is equally important though less often employed.

Greetings Manuel: In higher education, professors have typically not been prepared to consider pedagogy (or the psychology of t he learner with respect to the subject matter). Recently, a reform effort has been launched whereby student centered learning is the new topic for faculty development. You are wise to start with a definition of what is student centered teaching, and how would we recognize it when we see or experience it!

I would s t art here: Knowlton, D. S. (2000), A Theoretical Framework for the Online Classroom: A Defense and Delineation of a Student-Centered Pedagogy. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2000: 5–14

Contemporary student population is a mix of more students from minority groups, physically handicapped sections, rural back ground (not having a college-going tradition in their families), students whose medium of instruction up to 10+2 level was not English. The diversity is so glaring and faculty is expected to deliver subject contents to such a diverse group. Such diverse student groups expect the university commitments to fit in their life styles rather than vice versa, as reported in a study . Students have a choice to select different subjects and merged courses which are not constrained by curriculum , as compared to the situation even a decade ago, which expected students to move through a course as a unified cohort. Nowadays students feel that although their lectures may be presented in an engaging manner, the lecturers themselves are not readily accessible and students therefore feel dislocated from the learning process. One of the reactions of students demonstrates this situation, “He is not as approachable. I mean, his lectures are really good, but you cannot like to go and disturb him, because he is so busy and every one tells you he is so busy… but sometimes you have difficulties or whatever, it would be nice to talk to them, and not to feel that you cannot go and ask them something” .

I forgot to mention the author's names from which I quoted in my previous comment. Reproducing the same with author's names:

Contemporary student population is a mix of students from minority groups, challenged individuals and different levels of learning capabilities. The diversity is so glaring and faculty is expected to deliver subject contents to such a diverse group. Such diverse student groups expect the university commitments to fit in their life styles rather than vice versa, as reported in a study (Astin, 1998). Students have a choice to select different subjects and merged courses which are not constrained by curriculum (Kuh, 2003), as compared to the situation even a decade ago, which expected students to move through a course as a unified cohort. Nowadays students feel that although their lectures may be presented in an engaging manner, the lecturers themselves are not readily accessible and students therefore feel dislocated from the learning process. One of the reactions of students demonstrates this situation, “He is not as approachable. I mean, his lectures are really good, but you cannot like to go and disturb him, because he is so busy and every one tells you he is so busy… but sometimes you have difficulties or whatever, it would be nice to talk to them, and not to feel that you cannot go and ask them something” (Jenkins et al., 1998) .

Coming to the next question about criteria of student-centered learning:

1. To what extent is learning facilitated by the instructor/ professor?

2. To what extent learning outcomes are achieved. Again to quote Mc William (1999): “the effective teacher is one who is successful in using pedagogical techniques (including new technologies) that turn students’ eyes away from the teacher’s own performance and back toward their own individual or group performance, because we are now sure that this is the best way to guarantee valuable learning outcomes”.

3. Approachability/ accessibility of teacher

4. To what extent students will (i) acquire concepts of the discipline; (ii) develop their conceptions; and (iii) change their conceptions (Prosser et al., 1994). Thus we are talking about progression of a student to higher levels of knowledge.

Based on the context of the study, several criteria can be formulated.

From this criteria, you can very easily conclude what type of evidence needs to be collected. Though well-known technique is "Students Feedback forms", these forms needs to be re-designed to suit the components of student-centric system.