Using Reflection Surveys to Improve Teaching and Learning

Faculty are being held accountable these days for quality teaching, student learning, and student satisfaction like never before (Lowenthal, 2008). While research and publishing are in many ways still the sine qua non for faculty success and promotion as well as institutional prestige (Boyer, 1990), more emphasis is being placed on quality teaching these days (Lowenthal, 2008). At the University of Colorado Denver, like many other institutions, end-of-course student evaluations (called FCQ's) assess how well individual faculty are teaching. And while research suggests that these evaluations can be useful and even improve aspects of teaching if used in certain ways (e.g., with a consultant or a peer) (McKeachie, 1997). For instance, researchers have expressed concern regarding how such things as class size, grading leniency, workload, and even learning environment and delivery format influence these evaluations (d'Apollonia & Abrami, 1997; Greenwald & Gillmore, 1997; Kelly, Ponton, & Rovai, 2007; Marsh & Roche, 1997). While the average faculty member tends to be suspicious of their value, these evaluations appear to do a decent job of measuring student satisfaction. Issues of selectively and inconsistently using these evaluations for tenure and promotion aside, perhaps the biggest problem we find with these evaluations is that faculty often do not receive their end-of-course student evaluations for weeks, if not months after the semester. This is too late to fix any problems with the course in question. Instead, faculty have to wait to make adjustments to the course and their teaching strategies until the next time they teach the course in question.