Learner Assessment of Teaching

Brief Thoughts about Formal, Institution-Driven Assessments

Our learners’ assessments of our teaching - whether officially required by an institution or informally completed within our classrooms - provide insight as to the lived experience of being in the learning spaces we create.

That said, these evaluations are not without significant challenges. There is much written on faculty evaluations - the process, the bias against female and BIPOC faculty, the potential for misuse and abuse of the evaluation system, and the utility of evaluations in general. I’m not addressing these issues here (though they are of extreme importance for Higher Ed to investigate).

I want to simply say, reading our own formal, institution-driven evaluations (for me at least) is anxiety-inducing. I’m talking next-level, “stomach lurches when you get the email alert that your evals are ready” anxiousness….literally “pull over and read my evals on the side of the road during rush hour” anxiousness (and yes, I pulled over to read my evals on term).

Why? Because learners - and their experiences - are the center of my teaching focus. Because showing up as fully human in the class and fully caring about the experience makes me vulnerable.

Very rarely has my response been anger or frustration (though for some folks that response is their coping mechanism), though in the past, my responses tended to be rumination rather than action. I am happy to say that I have reached a level of maturity in my reflection that I can truly reflect on feedback - in particular the qualitative comments - and move forward with productive action. That is the point of the process, right? *

*That’s kind of rhetorical, but also a genuine question. If a goal is improvement of teaching in service of learners, we should really explore when the timing of these evals (such as midterm) when course correction is meaningful for learners. Of course, many of us do informal assessments during the term for precisely this reason. If a goal is improved faculty teaching, we should be contextualizing them within a larger plan of faculty growth and development.