A COMPENDIUM OF SCALES for use in the SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

asks students to turn in their papers anonymously, and later reads through the responses
looking for themes regarding, for example, what students are or are not learning well or what
improvements might be made in the course to improve student learning.
Graded Assignments and Tests
Students’ graded assignments and tests are readily available yet often overlooked as evaluation
tools of instruction. Grades provide an objective albeit an indirect measure of teaching quality
as well as student learning. Grades may be a good indicator of how well students understand
certain material; teachers can use this information to improve the way in which subsequent
instruction is structured and presented. Any graded assignment (e.g., tests, quizzes, papers,
activities) could potentially serve this purpose, assuming the teacher is able to directly tie the
material in the graded assignment to a learning objective for the course (e.g., a test question to
identify the statistical concepts in an advertisement as a measure of statistical literacy).
However, keep in mind that graded assignments and tests may not be as easily interpretable as
other measures of teaching quality because many factors contribute to an individual’s
performance (e.g., motivation, ability, study skills, and educational history).
Student Focus Groups
The purpose of student focus groups is to obtain more detailed information than might be
possible if the entire class was surveyed. To avoid bias in student feedback, it is advantageous
for an outside consultant (e.g., staff from the institution’s teaching and learning center,
instructor from another department) to gather information from a subset of students in a
course. Instructors may work with the consultant beforehand to determine the type of
information to be gathered from the student groups.
Student Evaluations of Teaching
The most common form of teaching evaluation is the student evaluation of teaching (SET),
which is typically a set of written fixed-answer questions that is most beneficial when well
developed and empirically supported. Numerous rating scales with unknown psychometric
properties are accessible; however, there are also several empirically-supported instruments
available. These instruments are reliable, valid, and consistent over time, and include the
Student Evaluation of Educational Quality (SEEQ; Marsh, 1982), Barnes et al.’s (2008) measure,
and the Teacher Behaviors Checklist (TBC; Buskist et al., 2002; Keeley et al., 2006). In addition
to these rating scales, the Office of Educational Assessment at the University of Washington
(2005) has developed a system consisting of several evaluation forms to measure teaching
effectiveness. The Office of Educational Assessment at the University of Washington developed
this detailed, empirically-supported evaluation system through a series of methodical
interviews with faculty, administrators, and through student focus groups.
Despite the valuable feedback students might provide, they do not have the experience and
expertise that professional teaching colleagues may contribute to the evaluation process. Peers
may also have the ability to assist in troubleshooting classroom and teaching issues as well as
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