Assessing Teaching

Effectiveness
Jessica G. Irons
James Madison University
Assessing Teaching Effectiveness
ESSENTIALS OF EFFECTIVE TEACHING SERIES

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‫م‬2013 - ‫هـ‬1434
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Assessing Teaching Effectiveness

Assessing Teaching Effectiveness

Most teachers who take their craft seriously have questioned their teaching
effectiveness and how to go about improving teaching. The endeavor to become a
more effective teacher suggests that no matter how good your teaching might be, it
can be better. Great teaching today may not be great teaching tomorrow as teaching
is dynamic with ever-changing variables (e.g., new students, new courses, new texts)
that can influence what we do as teachers and how well it works (Knapper & Cranton,
2001). Given that teaching is such a complex set of tasks conducted under a multitude
of conditions, it is virtually impossible to achieve temporary, much less sustained,
perfection in teaching. Although perfection may not be within reach, improvement
and mastery of many aspects of teaching is well within our grasp. Whether you are
interested in improving your teaching for personal reasons or professional reasons,
teacher evaluation strategies must be carefully selected to help you identify and reach
your teaching goals (Davis, 2009; Svinicki & McKeachie, 2011).

When designing your courses, you probably begin with learning objectives and
then make decisions about the text, readings, and assignments for your students
to complete. Although critical, these elements of course design alone are not
sufficient for a truly effective course. Indeed, establishing rapport, developing fair
and effective student assessments, and deciding how best to engage students in
the learning process are also essential. All of these elements of course design can
be evaluated and potentially improved. Although most teachers would agree that
teacher evaluation is important, an evaluation plan regarding your teaching may not
always be included in your course design. However, the time and effort to discover

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and employ strategies for teacher evaluation in your courses is important for you and
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your students. After all, improved teaching will likely lead to improved student learning
in your classroom. Below I outline why it is important to evaluate teaching, who can
evaluate your teaching, and when and how you can evaluate your teaching.

Why Evaluate Teaching?

The reasons for teaching evaluation can be conceptualized as largely personal
or professional. In the context of teaching evaluations we often refer to personal
motivations for evaluation as formative and professional motivations are summative.
Formative evaluation of teaching emphasizes personal reflection and growth related
to student learning-finding new and better ways to convey information to students,
helping them to appreciate the subject matter, and empowering them to become
self-learners.

Formative evaluation, is aimed at improving teaching and focuses on two questions:

• Am I an effective teacher?

• How can I become a more effective teacher?

Summative evaluation is often used by administrators in decision making about

professional status and merit-salary for faculty. Summative evaluation emphasizes
accountability and addresses three questions:

• Am I a “good” teacher relative to my peers?

• Is my teaching an aid or hindrance to tenure and promotion?

• Is my teaching worthy of merit salary or promotion?

Interestingly, both formative and summative evaluation often entails many of the same
assessment tactics. Indeed, if teachers focus primarily on becoming better teachers
through formative evaluation, then improved summative outcomes will likely follow.

What Is To Be Evaluated?
When we consider teaching and its evaluation, we generally think about what
we do in the classroom: the clarity of our lectures, the extent to which we engage
students in discussion, and so on. Obviously, teaching involves more than classroom
performance. We prepare for hours in advance of class, we create and grade exams
and other assignments, and we meet students during office hours, to name but a

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few components of teaching that occur outside the classroom. Inside as well as
outside of the classroom, students should be learning something about our subject
matter and teachers should control the learning environment so that students can
achieve that goal-and the outcome of this process is also relevant for evaluation. This
broader perspective of teaching encompasses four dimensions: course organization
and preparation, classroom performance, approachability and availability, and
assessment of student learning.

Course Organization and Preparation

In evaluating our teaching, we often overlook course organization and preparation

and focus on classroom performance. How we prepare and organize our courses
is inextricably related to what it is we actually do in the classroom, and thus what
students learn. Generally, our courses are organized around what we wish our
teaching to achieve in terms of learning outcomes. So, when thinking about how to
organize and prepare for a course, the first question to ask is, “What is it I want my
students to learn?” Once this question has been addressed, three other important
questions must be entertained to evaluate course preparation and organization:

• Are these outcomes appropriate to the level and content of the course?

• How do I connect these outcomes with specific course activities?

• Will these outcomes stimulate intellectual growth and enjoyment of learning?

Answers to these questions should appear in your class syllabus and

unambiguously convey to students the following aspects of course planning: student
learning outcomes, the nature of the subject matter, the kinds of classroom learning
activities you will use, how you will engage students, your approach to testing, and
your classroom management practices.

Classroom Performance

To become an effective classroom teacher demands expertise in your field.

Expertise is certainly necessary, but not sufficient, for effective teaching. Being able
to communicate that knowledge clearly and enthusiastically is also key to effective
student learning. Classroom performance includes not only your expertise and
your ability to communicate, but also your ability to create a learning environment
that maximizes student learning. What we teach cannot be disentangled from the
environment in which we teach it. Thus, becoming a successful teacher hinges on our
abilities to establish rapport, an interpersonal dynamic that increases the likelihood

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that students will pay attention to, and understand, what we teach. Essential aspects
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of rapport building include, among other things, learning students’ names, using
relevant examples when possible, treating students respectfully, using appropriate
humor, and starting and ending class on time (Buskist & Saville, 2004).

Approachability and Availability

An important consequence of effective classroom teaching is that our demeanor in

the classroom influences our students’ willingness to initiate one-on-one contact with
us outside of class. If students perceive us to be supportive and caring, then they may
also perceive us as being approachable outside the classroom. If we are not seen as
accessible by students, then our students may be avoiding outside of class contact with
us that may be important for their success in our classes. You may be unaware of such a
situation if you do not include approachability and accessibility in your teaching evaluation
strategies. Questions to ask to assess your approachability and availability include:

• What is my interactive style with students?

• Do I encourage students to meet with me?

• Am I in my office during my office hours?

• Do I pay attention to my students when they are talking to me?

• Do I respond promptly and courteously to student phone calls and e-mail?

Assessment of Student Learning

Perhaps the most overlooked factor in the evaluation of teaching is how we
assess students’ learning. As teachers, we often rely on student assessments of
various kinds to inform conclusions about student learning. Assessments help us to
answer questions like: Have my students learned? What have my students learned
well and what have they misunderstood? Have my students retained information and
skills over time? Although the answers to these questions are critical to providing
feedback about student learning, they are likely just as informative for teachers, as
student learning is a primary indicator of effective teaching. Our student assessments
strategies can be evaluated across a variety of dimensions; however, teaching
evaluation often omits student assessments entirely. This oversight is perplexing
because the ultimate goal of teaching is, of course, to facilitate student learning. Do
you have a logical rationale for assessing how well you are accomplishing this goal?
Before answering this question, first consider several related questions:

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• What is the relation of your assessment protocol to your student learning outcomes?

• How frequently do you assess student learning and why?

• What formats do you use to assess student learning and why?

• How promptly do you return graded materials?

• How much feedback do you provide students regarding their learning?

• What procedures do you use for remediation?

• Are your assessment and grading procedures fair?

Entertaining these questions makes plain the dilemma: Does our approach to
assessment of student learning reflect our commitment to helping students become more
effective learners or is it merely convenient for us? When our goal as teachers is student
learning, the way we draw conclusions about that learning is important and establishing
effective practices in student assessment is vital to improving our teaching.

Assessment of Teaching: What Are the Choices?

Although all teachers would likely agree that teacher evaluation is important, when
designing a course an evaluation plan is often overlooked. Your preparation and
organization, classroom performance, approachability and availability, and assessment
of your students’ learning are all possible aspects of teaching to evaluate. The question,
of course, is how best to go about the task of evaluating the many aspects of teaching I
have noted thus far. Who provides the evaluative data, when should the evaluation be
conducted, and what assessment technique(s) should comprise the evaluation?

Who Provides Evaluative Data?

Students are our most common source of evaluative information (Lewis, 2001).
Although the validity of data from student evaluations has been called into question
(e.g., Greimel-Fuhrmann & Geyer, 2003), student evaluations continue to be used
as a primary assessment tool for most teachers and administrators. Nonetheless,
additional forms of assessment, such as self-assessment and peer consultation,
can provide useful supplemental information. For example, both self-assessment
and peer consultation are likely to be superior to student evaluations in providing
feedback regarding developing appropriate student learning outcomes, developing
and revising syllabi, understanding the relationship of student learning outcomes to
student learning, and creating effective formats for assessing student learning.

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When Should Evaluations be Conducted?

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Evaluations are most often given at the very end of the semester. The advantage
of these evaluations is that it provides data about your teaching over the entire course.
The disadvantage is that the group of students provided those evaluations will not
experience any direct benefit of their feedback. The alternative to end-of-the-semester
evaluations is to evaluate your teaching earlier in the semester such as at the mid-term.
That way, the end-of-the-semester evaluation can be used to gauge how successfully
you resolved any important issues about your teaching that you discovered by
analyzing the mid-term students evaluations of your teaching. Our students frequently
voice their appreciation of our willingness to incorporate their suggestions provided on
earlier evaluations into improving the classroom learning experience for them.

Of course, you may wish to evaluate your teaching more than once or twice a
semester-even on a weekly basis. Keep in mind, though, that even brief evaluation
will take some time to administer and collect and your students may find such
frequent assessment taxing, which may in turn compromise the quality of the
feedback you derive from the process. Instead, you may wish to solicit feedback
from your students when trying a new technique or demonstration for the first time or
when making other sorts of modifications to your teaching. Two or three evaluations
per semester will likely provide ample useful data for you to assess your teaching
effectiveness. You may use end-of-the-semester evaluations from one semester to
help make decisions about aspects of your course that you might wish to specifically
evaluate during subsequent semesters.

Although most universities typically have an instrument they require for end-of-
the-semester evaluations, developing your own questions for additional evaluations
allows you to assess student perceptions of your teaching that the university instrument
might overlook. Such evaluations also allow more flexibility in asking questions that
you deem especially critical to understanding your approach to teaching.

What Assessment Techniques Might be Used?

Techniques for assessing teaching fall into three general categories: student
feedback, self-assessment, and peer evaluation. These techniques may be used alone
or in combination. Each teacher should consider developing a personalized strategy as
teaching assessment is not a one-size-fits all endeavor. Teachers may even consider
having different assessment strategies to evaluate teaching in different courses that
they teach. After all, a large introductory survey course will be a very different course

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than a discussion-based or practical upper-level course. You would likely not assess
your students for these different classes with the same tests and assignments, so
perhaps you would not use the same evaluation plan for your teaching in both courses.
No matter what approach you ultimately use, you may wish to consider compiling
feedback from students, peers, and your own self-reflection over your teaching.

Student feedback may be collected in several ways, for example, through the
typical paper and pencil course evaluations containing forced-choice (true/false or
multiple choice) and/or open-ended items are the typical means of gather data about
your teaching at most universities. If your department or university has a standard
form that everyone is required to use, it likely takes the form of a pencil and paper
assessment that students complete during class one day near the end of the term.
As noted, you may also add questions to such a format for your own information. A
combination of quantitative and qualitative questions provide students the opportunity
to provide detailed feedback. Open-ended or qualitative questions potentially allow
teachers to determine why students rate them poorly (or well) on quantitative items.

In addition to standardized formats, you might also consider employing in-class

learning assessment techniques (see Angelo & Cross, 1993 for detailed descriptions).
In-class assessment techniques (or CATs) involve asking students to engage in brief
tasks, during class, with the aim of gauging their knowledge or understanding to
check progress quickly and efficiently, or to specifically assess student impression
of an assignment or demonstration. Whether you choose to use a CAT to check
student progress or to ask students about a teaching practice, both strategies can
provide useful feedback about your teaching. CATs are low or no-stakes assignments
that should be briefly used for improving your teaching and your students learning.
Just as CATs are low stakes for students, they are also low time commitments for
teachers in terms of class time to administer and collect as well as analysis of student
answers. Just a few examples of CATs include the minute paper, the muddiest point,
and student-generated exam questions. The minute paper involves asking students
to briefly summarize the most important point from that day’s material. The muddiest
point involves asking students to take a few minutes to describe the most difficult
or least clear part of the day’s material. Student-generated test items involves
asking students to develop “test” questions that are similar in format to typical tests
questions in the course. Students should also generate answers to those questions
and in doing so will have the opportunity to practice answering questions on the topic
of choice, which may reveal to them any misunderstanding that they might have
about course content.

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Paper and pencil evaluations provide global information regarding your overall
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teaching effectiveness and typically center on your qualities as a teacher. CATs focus
on what students learn during any given class period. An alternative to pencil and
paper assessments and CATs is the use of student focus groups. Focus groups involve
recruiting randomly selected students from your class to meet in focus groups outside
of class time to provide feedback on specific aspects of your course-for example, clarity
of lectures, testing and grading procedures, and so on. Focus groups are also useful
in providing feedback regarding your rapport with students and gathering suggestions
for building stronger rapport. You identify what you would like to be discussed in
focus groups and construct a set of questions for the students in the focus group to
consider. An impartial individual (a colleague or other) might serve as a mediator for
the focus groups. This person poses the questions to students and compiles the data
(anonymously) as they discuss answers to the questions. You may run focus groups
for yourself, but consider that, if you do, your students may be less candid with critical
feedback because you are present and their feedback is not anonymous.

No matter which techniques you use to collect student feedback, remember that
students are not experts in your content area, nor are they experts in teaching.
Students are best poised to offer feedback about your interpersonal skills within
the teaching context, including your ability to establish rapport, your approachability
and accessibility, and your respectfulness. Students are also important sources of
information about your pace of lecture presentation, clarity of your lectures, and
organization of your notes or PowerPoint slides.

In addition to student assessment, you might also engage in self-assessment. Self-

assessment techniques provide valuable data regarding all aspects of your teaching,
and like student evaluations, exist in several formats. Informal reflection after class
is a brief and low-investment approach to compiling information about your teaching.
Informal reflection involves assessing how well we performed on any given day. One
useful measure for these judgments is the extent to which students appear attentive
and engaged in class discussion. You might simply ponder your class experience or
you may keep a teaching journal. After each class take a few moments to note what
went well or poorly and any thoughts you might have on how you might improve or
change what you did that day. If you choose to write these thoughts in a journal then
you have a steady stream of data on which to reflect when you get ready to teach the
course again. You might also consider audiotape analysis that consists of recording a
class and replaying it with a critical ear. Although this practice will require a little time,
you will certainly have some insight about your teaching upon reflection.

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Review and revision of your teaching philosophy statement is also a helpful self-
assessment strategy. A teaching philosophy is a brief document that outlines your
values and goals as a teacher. Your teaching philosophy, as you might imagine, is
a dynamic document that will develop as your experiences inform your teaching.
Writing about your approach to teaching as well as your actual teaching experiences
creates opportunities for reflection on your teaching life-the chance to lead an
“examined life” as a teacher. Contemplating both what you do well and not so
well as a teacher may provide insights into personal actions you may undertake
for becoming a better teacher. Finally, comparison of student learning outcomes
to actual student achievement allows you to consider how well your students are
achieving the objectives you set for them and permits you to identify ways that you
might help them achieve those goals. It also provides a means of assessing how well
your course preparation and organization help students achieve these outcomes.

Self-assessment is critical for personal growth; however, you are likely your
worst critic and you are certainly not impartial when considering your own teaching.
Because students are not particularly good sources of feedback about some aspects
of teaching (e.g., our knowledge of content) and we lack insight or can be overly
critical of ourselves, it is also important to consider collecting feedback from peers.

Peer evaluations most often take the form of a departmental colleague visiting
one of our classes and providing feedback afterwards. However, peers may also
provide us useful feedback in a variety of other ways including audiotape analysis,
review of syllabi (e.g., learning outcomes, content, and grading procedures), and
review of your teaching philosophy.

Most of our departmental peers have not been trained in formal analysis
of teaching strategies and style, so they may not often provide us with concrete
suggestions for improving our teaching per se. However, what departmental peers do
know is our content area. Thus, they often can provide helpful suggestions regarding
course content, demonstrations and examples of specific topics and issues, and the
relationship between student learning objectives and content. For feedback beyond
content-related issues in the classroom, you might consider asking a colleague who
specializes in teaching or learning or one whose teaching you admire to come and
visit your class to offer feedback or advice. You might also consider contacting your
campus teaching and learning center, if your university has one, as ask one of their
teaching experts to observe your teaching. Peers, departmental or otherwise, may
also be helpful because they know the student population we teach and can offer

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insights on how to adjust our teaching to that population. You will want to discuss
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your particular goals for your teaching with the colleague who observes you and be
certain to prompt the observer and to help provide some structure to the feedback.

Peer consultation, in theory, seems to be an excellent tactic to compile critical

feedback about some aspects of your teaching for which your students and yourself
are poor sources of information. In practice, there are several caveats when consulting
with peers about your teaching. First, you have on-going relationships with your peers,
so it is possible that they might be reserved in offering candid critical feedback. Second,
if your peer is too blunt with critical feedback, it is possible that you will respond poorly
and thus your interpersonal relationship could subsequently be strained. Finally, when
asking a peer to evaluate your teaching be careful to ask a colleague whom you
trust and who is open-minded about a variety of teaching approaches. Be clear about
the goals of your asking someone to observe your teaching and consider the peer
consultant specific points to consider if you have particular areas of your teaching that
you are interested in improving. Above all, be open-minded and remember than no
matter how good we are as teachers, we can always become better teachers.

How Can Evaluative Data be Used to Improve Teaching?

There are eight general guidelines that may be useful in helping you assess and
improve your teaching. Each guideline emphasizes an essential point for developing
a comprehensive approach to assessing and improving teaching.

Focus on Formative Evaluation First, Then Summative Evaluation

Using feedback from your teaching evaluations will help you become a better
teacher and will help your students become better learners. As you become a better
teacher, you and your students are likely to enjoy your teaching more and your
teaching evaluations are likely to improve-and receiving better teaching evaluations
means you have less to worry about regarding summative evaluation.

Specific Feedback is Better than Global Feedback

Global feedback such as “You’re a really good teacher” or “You need to be more
approachable” is vague and not helpful in identifying ways to improve your teaching.
Seek feedback that emphasizes specific behaviors that you either need to change or
adopt. For example, feedback such as “You did a great job getting our term papers
back to us 2 days after we turned them in” or “I sent you an e-mail 3 days ago and

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you still haven’t answered it” allows you to focus on the precise behaviors you need
to change or maintain.

More Feedback is Better Than Less

The more feedback you gather, the more information you will have to consider
to assess your teaching effectiveness. Although the numerical information from
the objective portions of student evaluations may provide an overall impression
that students have of your teaching, gather as much specific written commentary
from students and peers as you can. This information is useful in interpreting the
numerical data and is more likely to pinpoint specific aspects of your teaching that
are meritorious or need improvement.

Take Context into Consideration

As you examine your teaching strengths and weaknesses, consider context as a

potential factor influencing your approach to teaching and your students’ motivation
to learn. Sometimes students’ willingness to study for your classes is diminished
by their extracurricular interests. If so, your task is to inspire students to strive for a
balance between studying and becoming too distracted by their other interests. At
other times, your approach to teaching may not be appropriate for the level of the
class. This point is especially true of new faculty who, coming right from graduate
school, demand that undergraduates read nearly as much as they did while those
new faculty did while earning their PhDs.

Seek Consistent Themes Within and Across Evaluative Measures

As you gather evaluation information, step back and examine it as a continuous

whole look for patterns in the feedback you receive. Reflect on both critical and
positive themes in your evaluations, and link valid criticisms-those comments that
identify deficits in your teaching-to specific teaching behaviors that can be adjusted
to improve your teaching effectiveness. However, do not focus on criticism to the
extent that you overlook what is positive about your teaching. Indeed, the key to
enhancing your teaching is to refine what you do well while simultaneously improving
what you do less than well.

Ignore the Lone Voice of Gloom

No matter how good our student teaching evaluations may be, students are
usually not unanimous in their opinion of us or our teaching. Most of us have at least

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one student in each of our classes to whom we just don’t relate very well-despite our
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best efforts to connect with everyone. Sometimes we do not know that this student
even exists until we get our teaching evaluations back and read a comment such
as: “Dr. X is the single worst teacher I have ever had. I should get my tuition back for
this class”. For most of us, this comment is the one that we will remember the most,
even when the bulk of the other commentary is positive. You should ignore student
commentary that is mean spirited or harshly critical, but without any evidence to
substantiate it, and when it is offered only by a single student (this advice also applies
to extremely positive commentary that is similarly devoid of substance, for example,
“I loved this teacher” or “This teacher is wonderful”).

Use Multiple Measures to Assess Your Teaching

Do not limit the assessment of your teaching to a single source (e.g., students) or
a specific teaching dimension (e.g., classroom performance). You will have the best
chances of improving your teaching if you gather evaluative information from both
students and your peers on all aspects of your teaching.

Develop an Individualized Assessment Plan for Each of Your Courses

Adopt a reflective approach to the evaluation of your teaching. As you prepare your
syllabi for next semester, begin contemplating how you will assess your teaching in each
of your classes. In fact, you may wish to incorporate assessment plans for your teaching
that involve your students into your syllabi. Prior to each semester, contact the Deanship
of Skills Development to arrange for a peer observation. Such advance planning allows
you to design assessment strategies tailored to providing you specific information about
your teaching strengths and areas of improvement in each of your courses.

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Summary
The most effective way of improving your teaching is to regularly use a range
of assessment tools help you learn what you are doing well and what aspects of
your teaching need improvement. In outlining this process, I made the following key
points in this booklet:

• Teaching assessment can be both formative and summative but focusing on the
formative will likely lead to sound outcomes related to summative assessment.

• Aspects of teaching to assess include course organization, classroom perfor-

mance, approachability and accessibility, and assessment of student learning.

• Sound sources of information about your teaching include your students, your
colleagues, and yourself.

• When developing an assessment plan, you should consider gathering evalu-

ative data from multiple sources, across multiple time points, and using a
variety of assessment tactics.

• Focus on identifying themes in your evaluation data in order to develop a

strategy for improving your teaching.

References
- Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A
handbook for college teachers (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

- The authors describe a variety of classroom assessment techniques and

describe several ways to implement these techniques in classes. In addition,
the authors suggest ways to use these techniques as quick assessments for
your students as well as sources of information to inform your teaching.

- Buskist, W., & Saville, B. K. (2004). Rapport-building: Creating positive

emotional contexts for enhancing teaching and learning. In B. Perlman, L.
I. McCann, & S. H. McFadden (2004). Lessons learned: practical advice for
the teaching of psychology (Vol. 2) (pp. 149155-). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Society.

- The authors describe the importance of rapport in the classroom including

some tips for establishing rapport in the classroom.

- Greimel-Fuhrmann, B., & Geyer, A. (2003). Students’ evaluation of teachers

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and instructional quality: Analysis of relevant factors based on empirical

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evaluation research. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 283,

229238-.

- This study examines factors that influence teaching evaluations including

teacher behavior, student interest in the topic, and whether students liked the
teacher. Although teacher behavior is the primary factor that influences global
teacher evaluation ratings, other factors also influenced ratings.

- Davis, B.G. (2009). Tools for teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

- This volume serves as a useful reference for teachers in all disciplines.

Topics include designing your course, the use of technology in the classroom,
working with diverse populations, alternatives to lectures, and many more.

- Knapper, C., & Cranton, P. (Eds.). (2001). Fresh approaches to the evaluation
of teaching. New directions for teaching and learning: No. 88. San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass.

- The authors describe a variety of ways to improve teacher evaluations

including development of teaching portfolios, the addition of peer and self
evaluation, and the use of alternative evaluation instruments in addition to
standard mandated forms.

- Lewis, K. G. (Ed.). (2001). Techniques and strategies for interpreting student

evaluations. New Directions for teaching and learning: No. 87. San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass.

- This volume focuses on the use of student feedback for teacher evaluation.
The author offers tips for interpreting data derived from student evaluations
and ideas for improving the quality of feedback that students provide.

- Svinicki, M., & McKeachie, W. J. (2002). McKeachie’s teaching tips: Strategies,

research, and theory for college and university teachers (13th ed.). Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth

- This book serves as a manual for teachers in higher education. The authors
provide strategies and tips based on theory and empirical evidence and
suggest ideas for both the daily tasks of teaching (e.g., leading a discussion)
as well as the broad aspects of teaching (e.g., establishing rapport).

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