A PROTOTYPE STUDENT CLASSROOM EVALUATION
The aim of this format is to tie students' own estimates of how well they learned to particular aspects of the class pedagogy. It also aims to take the focus off the teacher, per se, and avoids critiques of pedagogy that are not directly related to students estimations of what they gained. Faculty should add specific elements of this class for which they seek feedback, but, in each case, frame your question so that it asks students what they felt they gained--in understanding, skills, attitudes, approach to learning or to the discipline. I have marked (*) the places in the format where you might want to ask about specific items. You may also want to delete line items that do not apply, or in order to shorten the instrument overall. You could also use some/all of the questions for feed-back at mid-term. The final version of the instrument will be placed on the Chemlinks / MC2 web-site so you can make your own editorial adjustments.
Whether or not you use this instrument is entirely up to you. It has been written to meet a need for improved evaluation tools for faculty that has emerged out of both student and faculty interviews. If you choose to use some/all of this format to supplement or replace your usual student evaluation form, we would like to know how well it works in giving you the kinds of feedback on student learning that you want. We would like as much field-testing and feedback as possible so that we can improve upon this first effort. It only works if it's useful to you.
Elaine Seymour University of Colorado Bureau of Sociological Research Seymour@spot.colorado.edu (303) 492-0084