A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Evaluating courses and teaching
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is typically on courses and course teams as well as individual lecturers – on the script as
well as the actors, to paraphrase Biggs (2001). What has therefore been called for are more
broadly based approaches that could be tailored to differences in subject areas, course
structures and teaching-learning and assessment methods, and these began to appear
from the late 1980s onwards (e.g. Gibbs et al., 1988; Hounsell et al., 1997; Day et al., 1998).
It is these broader approaches to evaluation which are explored in this chapter.
Interrogating practice
What recommendations or guidelines do you have in your institution or
department on collection and analysis of feedback from students?
MOTIVES AND CONTEXTS
There are many motives for evaluating the impact and effectiveness of courses and
teaching. New lecturers are usually keen to find out whether they are ‘doing OK’, what
their strengths and weaknesses are as novice teachers, and how their teaching compares
with that of other colleagues. Module coordinators need to find out how smoothly
their course units – whether new or well established – are running, or that, for instance,
a fresh intake of students is settling in reasonably well. And those staff who oversee a
degree programme or suite of programmes may want to check how well the various
component units hang together, and whether there are sufficient opportunities for choice
and progression. But the drivers of feedback are extrinsic as well as intrinsic. With the
gradual professionalisation of university teaching have come expectations that new and
experienced lecturers will formally document the quality of their teaching – the former
as part of the assessment requirements of accredited learning and teaching programmes,
the latter to support bids for promotion or awards for excellent teaching (Hounsell, 1996).
At the same time, the advent of quality assurance has brought with it procedures within
institutions for the regular monitoring and review of modules and programmes, and
sector-wide guiding principles and precepts (see e.g. QAA, 2006a, 2006b). And following
the recommendations of the Cooke Report (HEFCE, 2002), the inception of the National
Student Survey (NSS) has made data freely and publicly available on graduates’
satisfaction with their degree programmes, by subject area and by university (HEFCE,
2007; Richardson, 2007). As has reportedly occurred in Australia following a similar
initiative, the nationally administered Course Experience Questionnaire (see e.g. Wilson
et al., 1997; McInnis et al., 2001), we can expect British universities to respond in two ways:
by ensuring that questions asked in the NSS questionnaire are echoed in in-house surveys;
and by more strategic support to enhance teaching quality in departments or faculties
where NSS ratings have been lower than expected.