Boston University | CET | Faculty Development

Assessment of the quality of instruction is an important part of the improvement of courses and the teaching abilities of instructors. One of the primary sources of feedback is written evaluations from the students. At Boston University, the end-of-semester written evaluation of each course is administered by individual departments or colleges. Instructors should consult with their chair or department adminstrator to learn about the procedures and view the evaluation forms.

If your academic unit wishes to compose an evaluation form or to compare the current form with another, you can download a form composed by a collaboration between the CET and a group of interested students: Evaluation form in Word format

It can be very valuable for instructors to solicit feedback from students after about the first month of the course. The usual method is to have the students fill out (anonymously) a short form that the instructor hands out. [You can download a sample form in Word format that you can edit to apply to your own course.] This allows the instructor to change selected aspects of the course in a timely fashion. It also makes the students feel satisfied that the instructor is concerned with maximizing their ability to learn. Often, the students have divergent opinions about the format of the class. In this case, the instructor can use the mid-course evaluations to inform the students that while a subset of students would like to change the format, the majority feel that the current format is the best approach. The students in the minority will at least feel that their opinion has been considered and that the instructor has reasons for not following their suggestions.

Carnegie Mellon University instructor evaluation forms

Harvard University Derek Bok Center evaluation forms

see forms used for student evaluation of faculty instruction

IDEA Center at Kansas State University

resources on interpreting evaluation results
IDEA Papers - short papers synthesizing research about faculty evaluation and development

North Carolina State University student assessment of courses and faculty

comprehensive site which links to different institutions' assessment systems, research on student assessment, and web-based course evaluation

Stanford University Center for Teaching and Learning

pdf about interpreting student evaluations (note: this flier specifically addresses the interpretation of Stanford's evaluation forms, but there are also helpful and targeted suggestions included on how to improve teaching)

University of California San Diego evaluation forms

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