As important as design and implementation of teaching and learning are, the final stage of instruction—making sense of what happened—is equally valuable.
Faculty can learn a great deal from eliciting feedback from students as well as colleagues; likewise, students depend on and greatly benefit from faculty feedback on their work. The topics below offer concrete guidelines and strategies for these assessment and reflection practices.
Grading and Giving Feedback on Student Work
Grading and feedback are among the most powerful ways in which teachers communicate with students. They are interconnected tools for teachers to express what they think students should be learning, and for helping students make progress toward those goals. This SLATE tip sheet contains a number of strategies and practices for grading and giving feedback effectively.
Gathering Feedback from Students
For ideas on how to gain insight into how students are doing in your course in an ongoing way—what they do or don't know, whether they are engaged, etc.—see these eight concrete strategies in Methods for Assessing Student Learning and Engagement, a handout developed by Lee Warren for a 2009 HKS teaching seminar on faculty-driven assessment tools.
In addition, see this overview of Classroom Assessment Techniques (including descriptions of specific techniques), from the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning at Indiana University.
Course Evaluations
End-of-course evaluations are administered electronically by the Academic Dean’s Office for all courses taught at HKS. In addition, mid-way through the course, faculty are encouraged to provide students with a formal opportunity to share their perspectives on courses (assignments, readings, pacing, etc.). By then, students will have experienced enough to have an informed opinion, but it is still early enough to make positive changes for the rest of the course.
For more information on course evaluations—including procedures, tips for generating feedback forms, and how SLATE can help—HKS faculty members are invited to visit us on KNet (password required).