By: Susan Codone, Teaching and Learning
Kember, Leung, & Kwan, writing in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education (2002) indicate that formal faculty questionnaires completed by students at the end of the semester are not always effective in improving faculty performance, for many different reasons. Part of this problem is that the evaluations occur after the fact, after the class is completed and the professor and students have gone their separate ways. Hesketh & Laidlaw, writing in Medical Teacher (2002), state that feedback is most effective when it is well-timed according to daily work and is as close to the event that it evaluates as possible. That’s why I like to use something called a “plus/delta” evaluation. The plus/delta is a brief, half-page form that I hand out at the beginning of class. It was first developed by Dr. Marj Davis and Dr. Helen Grady at Mercer University. I ask students during class to think of a “plus” – something they like about our class, and a “delta” – something they’d like to change.
[ed. note – great practice that is easy to adapt to electronic delivery in multiple modes]
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