Tip #40: Teaching Feedback Options

Contributed by Enoch Hale, Director, Center for Teaching & Learning

How do we gain a better understanding of the student experience in our class? What services, tools, and resources are available to help me make strategically informed decisions about the curricular, pedagogical, technological, structural, and logistical dimensions of my course? How might I think about my teaching in a way that informs my RTP and/or might lead toward scholarship?

The CTL is one resource that works with faculty to put the finger on the pulse of the teaching and learning context. Moreover, the CTL can act as a resource to help faculty and departments contextualize, implement and assess approaches to augmenting end of the course student evaluations. Ultimately, the Center is here to assist in any way that fits with the instructor’s desires, needs, and schedule. In that spirit, we have curated a list of teaching feedback and evaluation options that provide lenses into studying the work we do as educators.

How to Use This Resource

The Teaching Feedback Options Resource provides direct links to best and evidence-based practices for teaching feedback and assessment from different venues in higher education. Resources are organized according to focus:

• Course Level Assessment
• Teaching Observation & Feedback
• Curriculum Analysis & Assessment
• Pedagogy
• Summative Evaluation & Teaching Portfolios
• Other Online Tools

Each section has a brief description. Teaching is a multifaceted endeavor. The What, Why & How of instruction and learning are interlinked and often difficult to tease apart. However, if we value high quality teaching and learning, then it deserves concentrated, systematic and scholarly attention. Two of the most important lessons we have learned from studies on evaluating teaching in higher education are that (1) “teaching must be judged using a learning perspective” and that (2) “excellent teachers develop their abilities through constant self-evaluation, reflection, and the willingness to change” (Bain, pp. 167, 172). It is in this spirit that we have constructed this document. Please contact the CTL or Enoch Hale, Ph.D. directly (enoch.hale@humboldt.edu) to explore how this work can be contextualized, implemented and assessed within your instruction and department.

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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