SoE: Module Evaluations - Time for Change? by WendyGarner

Suggestions for timing and administration of module evaluations

WendyGarner — 2024-02-21 12:31:54 UTC

Suggestions for closing the feedback loop

WendyGarner — 2024-02-21 12:32:05 UTC

Wider issues and more general comments

WendyGarner — 2024-02-21 12:32:18 UTC

Suggestions for questions (if we choose to go with this approach)

WendyGarner — 2024-02-21 12:33:09 UTC

Module Evaluation: Handbook D

WendyGarner — 2024-02-21 12:35:05 UTC

Module evaluation All modules delivered as part of a programme leading to a University award must include an opportunity for students to evaluate them. The process in this handbook sets out the minimum expectation in this regard. Programme teams, departments and faculties may adapt this process, but should take advice from Academic Services, by contacting enhancement@chester.ac.uk to discuss their plans first. A Module Evaluation Questionnaire (MEQ) should be made available to students normally between halfway and two thirds of the way through the module delivery. The MEQ must be available electronically via Moodle (there is a generic template available for use) and be open for around a week. Consideration should be given to making time within a timetabled lecture or seminar session for students to complete the MEQ. The MEQ template sets out six questions as follows:

1. Do you understand what you are supposed to be learning on the module? (Yes/No) 2. Do you understand how you will be assessed? (Yes/No) 3. Do you know how to access learning resources? (Yes/No) 4. Do you know who to contact for help? (Yes/No) 5. Please highlight any good practice that you particularly liked. (Free text) 6. Is there anything that you would want to change? (Free text) 7. What aspects of the Essential Online Learning Activities in Moodle best supported your learning on this module and why? (Free text)

The Module Leader is responsible for collating and analysing the responses to the MEQ in conjunction with the module delivery team. A brief report summarising the main feedback points, any actions that will be taken as a result or reasons why action cannot be taken must be produced and made available via the Moodle site for the module within two weeks of the closure of the MEQ. The report should also be discussed at a Student Voice Meeting.

WendyGarner — 2024-02-21 12:35:46 UTC

As a lecturer I find the feedback from students via. module evaluations really important in order to reflect upon my practice and improve further. However, I have found some reluctance from students to engage in this process despite time being allocated within sessions.

2024-02-21 12:45:41 UTC

I find the students have little interest in completing module evaluations. It is almost a forced practice despite time given, reminders and pleas!

2024-02-21 13:09:33 UTC

It would be easier for teaching staff (although I appreciate not for admin) if mod evals were set up - completing the spreadsheet is an additional step that can on occasions be overlooked if teaching and marking is particularly busy

2024-02-21 13:10:57 UTC

Ideally evaluations should pull through into a data set which PLs can use in CMEs. Using something like online surveys would support PLs with this.

2024-02-21 13:38:37 UTC

We need to adopt a single practice across the school, moodle and the start of the next module perhaps

2024-02-21 13:40:02 UTC

deborahforrest — 2024-02-21 13:40:37 UTC

I agree with the previous comments about reluctance. I encourage students to record their feedback and explain that the module ‘evaluations’ are more than just evaluations but an opportunity for students to feedback to us and for us to make changes for them.

brendanhoare1_2 — 2024-02-21 14:37:24 UTC

Customers or students?

brendanhoare1_2 — 2024-02-21 14:54:51 UTC

Does the current approach cater too much to the transactional, consumerist model of HE that has taken over in recent years, whereby the customer provides a review of the product purchased? Does such an approach fail to acknowledge the two-way, cooperative nature of the educational process?

brendanhoare1_2 — 2024-02-21 15:06:42 UTC

Does the impersonal and anonymous nature of current module evaluations provide a safe space for expressions of bias, as well as feeding into teachers' traditional tendency towards self-flagellation?

brendanhoare1_2 — 2024-02-21 15:11:25 UTC

"How might you and your peers have contributed to an improvement in the delivery of this module?"

brendanhoare1_2 — 2024-02-21 15:40:56 UTC

Spreadsheets? Online surveys? Data sets? Might we be able to squeeze in something a little more personal, and humane? Perhaps, a whole cohort "town hall" discussion at the end of the module? Are the methods we use simply chosen to suit administrative convenience and the compilation of data?

2024-02-21 16:44:51 UTC

There seems to me to be a gap between the quality of discussion around module tasks and teaching particularly in within the seminar model and the less insightful, reductive phrasing of written responses to module evaluation. Is this related to the individual nature of the current evaluation format and, if so, would operating evaluation in a shared dialogic format produce more useful information?

Given that one of the intentions of the teaching is that content should have a positive impact on ATs’ practice, would an end of module session that seeks, in discussion with ATs, to review the module content, reiterate its relevance to practice and elicit those aspects that ATs have found impactful serve to both support module leaders and also to offer a further learning opportunity for ATs to connect the theory as taught with their practice experience?

2024-02-21 17:04:51 UTC

We could do with more detail for some answers. For example when students answer 'No' to 'Do you know who to contact for help?' it is very difficult to know why they might feel this way when sources of help have been consistently signposted throughout the module. So an additional text box here which has to be filled in in order to answer No would be helpful. Also the same point for the previous question which is about knowing how to access learning resources.

2024-02-22 09:56:46 UTC