Does anything ever happen after those teaching evaluation surveys?
Maybe you know the problem. You want feedback on your teaching from your students. You want to know what they think went well, and what didn’t. Maybe you need their evaluations for future job applications. In whatever case, in your evaluation a more or less representative amount of feedback and number of ratings would come in handy. But your students are sick of evaluations! They wonder why they have to fill something out which will be of no use to them, and nothing ever comes of evaluations anyway… .
So the muttering of students. However, something actually does happen with student evaluations – even if most students aren’t aware of it. It is rare that someone attends a course twice, and there is little opportunity to find out whether lecturers have implemented their students’ wishes. Therefore, to let students and others know what happens after a questionnaire is submitted and why evaluations are important to teaching quality, we have created a 3-minute video with the help of Youknow (specialists in explainer videos). Please show this video to your students and motivate them to take part in the survey! This is especially useful if you have the opportunity to conduct the evaluation in class.[1]
The challenge for us was to explain the entire comprehensive, stringent evaluation process from survey via publication of findings to deduction of appropriate measures briefly and appealingly. A bigger challenge was to be responsive to students and take their criticisms seriously, while also dignifying the engagement of most lecturers. Whether and how well we have achieved this in three minutes of moving images is yours to decide!
[1] By in class evaluation we mean that you programmed the time your evaluation survey will be send out to students, and you ask them during your lecture time to fill in the survey, via their laptop or smartphone.
