NUTSHELL NOTES

"Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado
at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

Office of Teaching Effectiveness
1250 14th St. room 720
Denver, CO 80217-3364

Phone (303)556-4915
FAX (303)556-2678
Volume 1 Number 5

Navigating Your Way Through the Woods

Sweating, swearing, and swatting deer flies on a steaming, hot afternoon in the Appalachians, we had been hacking our way through shoulder-high poison ivy for over an hour, each of us glancing with concern at our watches to estimate our dwindling reserve of daylight. We listened for any hint of traffic from a road that we suspected, and surely prayed, was just ahead. We were also mortified — geology and engineering students who should have known better — lost in the woods! We were also in the midst of learning one of a field student's more humiliating lessons: maps aren't a tool you can use to find your location after you are lost. Instead, maps are used to chart your progress from the start, so that the issue of becoming lost simply does not arise.

The same principle holds true in surveying our students' perceptions of our classes. Most of us typically won't know we've lost a contingent of our students until we give that end-of-term evaluation, when some of us then discover to our chagrin that there were more hurtin' puppies in our classes than we suspected. Waiting until the end of the course to learn how well students' needs are being met is like waiting until you're lost to consult a map. At this stage, if damage has been done, there is no opportunity to alter your script to insure a happy ending. If however, you give a well-designed evaluation to check the pulse on your course early, you can then make needed changes, and you can prevent your final evaluations from taking that unintended turn toward an end-of-term ambush.

What is a "well-designed" evaluation tool? Primarily one which helps you target areas in which your effort will yield worthwhile improvements. This office provides a 40 - point diagnostic questionnaire developed from several years of research and use in Wisconsin, California and mainly in our own Colorado system. It is computer-scored, takes a very short time to give and is designed to help you, not to judge you or rank you competitively against peers. The results go to you alone. Follow-up consultation, which is completely confidential, is also available through this office. In order to schedule this diagnosis of your own class, simply send your name, your class size, the room where it meets and the date you'd like the survey given to the following campus address: Edward Nuhfer, Director - Office of Teaching Effectiveness, Campus Box 137; or phone me at 556-4915.

The value of giving a mid-term evaluation was shown by Cohen (1980, Research in Higher Ed., v. 13, pp. 321 - 341), who noted that those who gave no mid-term evaluations were likely to have final student evaluation ratings at about the middle of the pack (50th percentile - see graph below); those who merely gave a mid-term evaluation and used the results climbed to the 58th percentile. Those who gave a mid-term evaluation and used consultation with another person to help define effective ways to improve were likely to end up in the 74th percentiile. That si quite a difference, and indicates that results can come from some enlightened effort.

Consider using this free service while it can do the most for this term's course. It's no fun to be "lost in the woods!"

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