Evaluation of the course

Evaluation is an essential part of the teaching process. This chapter from Teaching legal research contains information on four of the main types of evaluation – refection and self evaluation, student feedback, views of tutors in the teaching school and peer review of teaching.

Purpose of evaluation

It is essential to gather information which will enable a teacher to assess the effectiveness of the instruction provided and learning achieved. This information must be fed into the evaluation process so that less successful aspects of the instruction are addressed and rectified. Also, where possible, successful aspects may be enhanced. Information to assist the process of evaluation may be obtained from four sources – reflection and self evaluation by the instructor, the opinions of people receiving the instruction, the views of tutors in the teaching school and the views of a colleague observing your teaching.

Types of evaluation

Reflection and self evaluation

Good teachers reflect on the effectiveness of their teaching. There are several ways to reflect on the success of a lesson. The process may be aided by making brief personal notes during or immediately after a session. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What was the purpose of the instruction?
• Did I have any particular concerns about the lesson before I delivered it?
• Which parts of the lesson went well and why?
• Which parts of the lesson did not go well and why?
• Were the learning outcomes achieved?
• Can I learn anything to ensure I improve my performance?

Alternatively, complete a form (for an example see illustration 26, available to download at the bottom of this page), which is primarily designed for use by a colleague reviewing your teaching session (see peer review, below), but which may also be used as an aide memoire for self evaluation. Glance down the list and under each heading note down your strengths and weaknesses in the session you have just given.

The effectiveness of your teaching may be gauged in other ways over a longer period of time by, for example, monitoring student use or enquiries in the library about the paper or electronic sources in which you have provided instruction. If this informal feedback indicates that some students are having difficulties with the skills and techniques taught, you should take remedial action by offering follow up sessions.

Student feedback

This can be obtained by direct and indirect means. Direct means include administering a survey questionnaire or initiating a group discussion amongst students. Indirect means include noting non-verbal behaviour of students during the lesson, such as eye contact (or lack of), background chatter (or lack of), interest in asking or answering questions, and then evaluating student performance in exercises and assessed work.

The administration of a questionnaire is one of the most widely used methods of collecting student feedback. Ideally, the questionnaire should cover all aspects of the design, delivery and assessment of the course of instruction. In practice, there is a need to keep the questionnaire sufficiently brief to elicit a high response rate. Where legal research skills instruction forms a part of a module, the student feedback questionnaire may be designed and administered by the teaching school. Where the instruction does not form part of a module, illustration 27 (available to download at the bottom of this page) shows an example of a very simple questionnaire which has been used in Cardiff University Libraries for several years.

It is best if the questionnaire is administered at the end of the period of instruction, whether it is the end of a ‘one-off’ session or the last session in a series, and collected before students leave the room. This will help to ensure that there is a high response rate and that the results provide a reliable picture of opinion.

A group discussion might be initiated at the end of the final session using open questions (How, What, When, Why) addressed to the whole group. The tutor should ensure that for consistency the same questions are put to every group following the course of instruction. Alternatively, you could request a tutor from the law school to elicit feedback in their next class.

If the feedback indicates students are having difficulties with the skills and techniques taught, you should take remedial action by offering follow up sessions.

Views of tutors in the law school

The views of law school tutors will help you to evaluate the effectiveness of student learning. For example, the quality of student work will be formally and informally assessed by tutors. As a result they will have formed views on how effectively the legal research skills have been met. Key indicators might be how well students have developed competencies in creating research strategies, how well they have uncovered the breadth and depth of appropriate material and whether they have avoided plagiarism.

Peer review of teaching

Feedback from colleagues may be informal or formal.

Informal feedback is provided when, for example, tutors or support staff assist in a session and are asked by the leading instructor (who may be a member either of the teaching school or the support service) after the session for comments on the tuition. Although such feedback is valuable, it often does not permit the identification of particular strengths or weaknesses in a session in the same way as will be achieved by the use of formal techniques.

If peer review of teaching is employed the following elements of good practice may be followed.

Formal feedback is elicited by staff sitting in on a teaching session given by a colleague and reviewing performance using a form such as that reproduced in illustration 15 (available to download at the bottom of this page). The purpose is for the person giving the evaluation ‘to hold up a mirror’ to the performance of the instructor being reviewed, thereby offering constructive and supportive comment which will assist the instructor to identify strengths and weaknesses in their teaching technique.

The reviewer should sit at the back of the class and use the form as an aide memoire of the aspects of instruction to watch for. Written comments should be made in the space at the right side of the page. Comments on every aspect of the presentation are not required, but only on those aspects which the reviewer considers deserving identification. The reviewer ought to provide verbal feedback to the instructor as soon as practicable after the session. At the end of the feedback the reviewer should hand the original completed form to the instructor for him/her to retain as an aid to the development of their instructional skills. The review document is for the use of the instructor alone and no copies of the review form should be made. However, the benefit to the reviewer must be recognised also – through reviewing the work of others he/she may discover good ideas for teaching technique which could be employed in his/her own instruction.

It is vital to the success of formal review that it is conducted in a constructive manner and in an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidentiality. No aspect of a review should be divulged to a third party by the reviewer.

In small group sessions, at the start of the lesson, the instructor should introduce the reviewer to the class and mention that his/her role is to review the performance of the instructor, not the students.

In an ideal world, every member of staff who takes an instructional session ought to be reviewed at least once every academic year, by a colleague who also teaches. The reviewer should be an experienced instructor. Teaching reviews can take place across subject boundaries, because it is the teaching technique, not the subject matter, which is the subject of the review.

Both lectures and small group work and at all levels of teaching may be reviewed.

Constructive feedback is valuable to assist reflection and can be a powerful learning tool both for those reviewed and the reviewer.

Summary

Course evaluation is an essential part of the teaching process. It may be achieved through any one or a combination of the following methods – the personal reflection and evaluation of the teacher, student feedback, the views of tutors in the teaching school or peer review by teaching colleagues. This latter is a sensitive area and must be conducted in a supportive environment of mutual trust and confidentiality. Evaluation should lead ultimately to improvement in the course and feed into a reconsideration of the ways in which the principles discussed in earlier chapters have been employed by the tutor in question.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010