What is the Student Feedback Service?

A teaching evaluation service available free of charge to all UCD faculty and teaching assistants.

A way to gather confidential information about your teaching. Your results will not be released to your department or anyone else without your permission.

A way to ask questions that will be most useful to you: choose a standard set, your own questions, or select from the Teaching Resources Center’s items.

Why would I use this service?

If your department does not provide you with end-of-quarter evaluations.

If you want to evaluate a new technique, a new textbook or a new class in a way that isn’t possible with your departmental evaluations.

If you want to ask questions that may help improve your teaching but may not be appropriate for a review committee or for personnel action.

How do I use this service?

Request this service at least two weeks before the end of the quarter

Come in to the Teaching Resources Center to pick up forms (or use campus mail)

Have an assistant administer the survey and return the forms to the TRC

A summary of the scaled questions and all the original forms will be returned to you early the following quarter.

Student Feedback Forms

The Teaching Resources Center has 8 standard forms: two general forms (a short form and a long form), a TA form, a Team Teaching form, plus those designed for specific types of classes (General Education, Laboratory, Seminar and Studio).

To create your own set of questions, use items from the test bank and record on the request form the item numbers in the desired order. There is also space on the request form to write your own items. We recommend that you ask no more than 20 items.

Getting the most out of student feedback for course improvement

Item Selection:

• select items tailored to the type of class (e.g., lecture, lab, studio, etc).
• strive for a comprehensive evaluation of the course.
• include questions that pertain to specific aspects of the course that are of special interest (e.g., evaluations of the web site, guest lecturer, a set of slides, a new lecture topic, etc.).
• if the items in the catalog do not address a topic of interest, write your own items or ask TRC to do so.
• include questions that ask for written comments

Strategies for Course Improvement

The most efficient strategy is to meet with a TRC teaching consultant to go over the results. TRC teaching consultants have had extensive experience with student evaluations and with helping instructors improve their teaching. However, should an instructor choose to do it alone, TRC suggests the following steps:

• examine items with particularly high and low ratings in order to gain a proper perspective on students’ perceptions of strengths and weaknesses.
• select from the lowest scoring items those that address areas that the instructor wants to improve.
• plan a specific course of action to improve teaching in each of those areas. (Note: In planning improvement strategies it is often helpful for instructors to draw on their identified strengths.)

Role of TRC: TRC will, upon request:

• assist instructors in developing student evaluation surveys.
• review the course evaluation with the instructor.
• suggest strategies for course improvement.