In September the CLT will again send a message to all staff wishing to use the CLT student feedback system. At that time we will send staff a new evaluation book outlining the services offered by CLT including the use of the SEQ, a new questionnaire which we foreshadowed in meetings with staff in the faculties in late 1997.
This questionnaire is an adaptation of the course experience questionnaire used nationally as a performance indicator. It contains items making up five scales: Good Teaching, Clear Goals and Standards, Appropriate Workload, Appropriate Assessment, and Generic Skills and one overall satisfaction item. Responses are on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
A now substantial body of research (summarised by Paul Ramsden in Learning to Teach in Higher Education, Routledge, 1992) supports the idea that the best a teacher can do for student learning is (crudely) to maximise the scores on these scales.
For these reasons we strongly recommend the use of this questionnaire as the standard UTS instrument for feedback on teaching and subjects and for documentation for promotion etc (if the 7-point rating question on teaching is included). The full questionnaire is given below. Items making up the scales are given over.
Good Teaching
3. The teaching staff on this subject motivated me to do my best work
7. Staff put a lot of time into commenting on my work
15. The staff made a real effort to understand difficulties I might be having
with my work
17. Teaching staff normally gave me helpful feedback on how I was going
18. Teaching staff were extremely good at explaining things
20. Teaching staff worked hard to make this subject interesting
Clear Goals and Standards
1. It was always easy to know the standard of work expected
6. I usually had a clear idea of where I was going and what was expected
of me in this subject
13. It was often hard to discover what was expected of me in this subject
24. The staff made it clear right from the start what was expected of students
Appropriate Workload
4. The workload was too heavy
14. I was generally given enough time to understand the things I had to
learn
21. There was a lot of pressure on me as a student in this subject
23. The sheer volume of work to be got through in this subject meant that
it couldn't all be thoroughly comprehended
Appropriate Assessment
8. To do well on this subject all you really needed was a good memory
12. Staff seemed more interested in testing what I had memorised than what
I had understood
16. The assessment methods employed in this subject required an in-depth
understanding of the subject content
19. Too many questions asked were just about facts
Generic Skills
2. The subject developed my problem solving skills
5. The subject sharpened my analytic skills
9. The subject helped me to develop my ability to work as a team member
10. As a result of my subject, I feel confident about tackling unfamiliar
problems
11. The subject improved my skills in written communication
22. The subject helped me to develop my ability to plan my own work
Overall rating questions recommended for use with the SEQ
one or both of:
A All things considered, how would you rate this subject?
B All things considered, how would you rate the teaching in this subject?
If you would like to use the SEQ we strongly advise the use of all 25 items. However, should you wish to use it, plus some questions of your own, we suggest you replace items from the Generic Skills scale (which links least strongly to student learning).
All the existing services offered by the CLT will continue to be provided, though the number of items available on the optical reading system is being limited to 29.
Please contact CLT (x2200 or clt@uts.edu.au) if you have any questions
or comments to make about this new system.