I found chapter nine in First Day to Final Grade to be insightful on getting the most out of student evaluations. The idea I like is from page 170, which suggests that you ask open ended questions on student feedback forms. You can ask 4-5 questions pertaining to the course that require thought filled answers. An example of this would be to initiate an answer by starting a phrase such as, "In the second half of this course, I would like to see more...... " and allow for students to fill in the remainder of the sentence. You can also ask questions about what their favorite activity thus far has been or what aspect of your teaching works best for their learning style. A good question for evaluations would be one that requires more than a simple yes or no answer.

I think it is really important as teachers to use evaluations as a basis for what works for the students and what doesn't work as well. In addition to using the open ended questions, I can also include a list of the activities we have done in class and have students rank them from the most to the least useful. This will help me re-evaluate the activities I do in class and possibly discard those that students don't find effective. The open ended questions will hopefully go more in depth as to why they ranked the activities the way they did.

This chapter also provides good information for reading the evaluations. A teacher at some point will undoubtedly get negative feedback but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the teaching or the class. Negative feedback can be driven by the student's academic frustrations or other personal issues. A good tip from the book is to realize that teaching is a process and isn't always perfect. Not everyone who takes your courses will like your teaching style or the course itself. Negative feedback should be considered for making improvements on the course but not taken to heart. There will also be students who do enjoy your courses and those are the evaluations you should re-read to keep a positive attitude.

I think a good suggestion from First Day is to read the evaluations at home, not around class time. This can give you time to relax and sort out any emotional reaction you may have to the evaluations. In my own experience, it's been interesting to look at how I've handled student criticism. I received a very negative comment from a student in the past and it stuck with me for some time. At a later time, I received positive feedback from a student from the same course. The chapter in First Day is helping me to realize that not everyone is going to like me or my teaching style and negative comments shouldn't be held on to. I think as I teach more it will get easier to hear negative comments and not be so effected by them. I think I can now look at those negative comments and use them a means for improving my teaching and not as a personal jab.

Chapter nineteen from Teaching Tips brings up the subject of teaching large classes. I am sure that at some point in my teaching career I will have to teach a large class. I believe a major challenge will be facilitating active learning. McKeachie describes a new form of technology that can make participation and learning easier in large classes. The use of electronic devices that a student can answer a question with can be useful. These devices are sometimes accompanied with a computer program that can display a graph of student answers and show voting trends. I think this method can help get students involved and provide a little healthy competition. Even though they won't know who chose which answer, there is always a desire to get the right answer and fall in the majority.

This method of technology was actually used in one of my classes and I found it to be beneficial on several levels. The professor would take breaks in lecturing and put questions up that we would answer with a clicker remote. A graph would then show how many votes were given for each possible answer. The professor then told us the right answer and those who got it right received 1/2 pt. extra credit. The activity was effective because it required participation from a large class, it encouraged students to pay attention and it encouraged students to look through their notes to find answers. The activity was timed so students had to pay attention or they would spend too much looking through their notes and miss the chance for extra credit. Even though this activity doesn't reduce anonymity, it does effectively get the class to participate in a large class setting.

Additional links...

This link provides an overview of some scientific correlations relating to the effectiveness of student evaluations. The specific page came from this website, which I thought had a lot of valuable links.

This article is fairly long but provides more information on student evaluations. And you may notice McKeachie is cited in most of the conclusion!

Some additional ideas for teaching large classes.